media and technology assignment

8.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Media and Technology

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

Discuss how we analyze media and technology through various sociological perspectives

It is difficult to conceive of any one theory or theoretical perspective that can explain the variety of ways in which people interact with technology and the media. Technology runs the gamut from the match you strike to light a candle all the way up to sophisticated nuclear power plants that might power the factory where that candle was made. Media could refer to the television you watch, the ads wrapping the bus you take to work or school, or the magazines you flip through in a dentist's waiting room, not to mention all the forms of new media, including Instagram, Facebook, blogs, YouTube, and the like. Are media and technology critical to the forward march of humanity? Are they pernicious capitalist tools that lead to the exploitation of workers worldwide? Are they the magic bullet the world has been waiting for to level the playing field and raise the world’s poor out of extreme poverty? Choose any opinion and you will find studies and scholars who agree with you––and those who disagree.

Functionalism

Because functionalism focuses on how media and technology contribute to the smooth functioning of society, a good place to begin understanding this perspective is to write a list of functions you perceive media and technology to perform. Your list might include the ability to find information on the Internet, television’s entertainment value, or how advertising and product placement contribute to social norms.

Commercial Function

As you might guess, with nearly every U.S. household possessing a television, and the 250 billion hours of television watched annually by people in the United States, companies that wish to connect with consumers find television an irresistible platform to promote their goods and services (Nielsen 2012). Television advertising is a highly functional way to meet a market demographic where it lives. Sponsors can use the sophisticated data gathered by network and cable television companies regarding their viewers and target their advertising accordingly. Whether you are watching cartoons on Nick Jr. or a cooking show on Telemundo, chances are advertisers have a plan to reach you.

And it certainly doesn’t stop with television. Commercial advertising precedes movies in theaters and shows up on and inside public transportation, as well as on the sides of building and roadways. Major corporations such as Coca-Cola bring their advertising into public schools, by sponsoring sports fields or tournaments, as well as filling the halls and cafeterias of those schools with vending machines hawking their goods. With rising concerns about childhood obesity and attendant diseases, the era of soda machines in schools may be numbered. In fact, as part of the United States Department of Agriculture's Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act and Michelle Obama's Let's Move! Initiative, a ban on junk food in school began in July 2014.

Entertainment Function

An obvious manifest function of media is its entertainment value. Most people, when asked why they watch television or go to the movies, would answer that they enjoy it. And the numbers certainly illustrate that. While 2012 Nielsen research shows a slight reduction of U.S. homes with televisions, the reach of television is still vast. And the amount of time spent watching is equally large. Clearly, enjoyment is paramount. On the technology side, as well, there is a clear entertainment factor to the use of new innovations. From online gaming to chatting with friends on Facebook, technology offers new and more exciting ways for people to entertain themselves.

Social Norm Functions

Even while the media is selling us goods and entertaining us, it also serves to socialize us, helping us pass along norms, values, and beliefs to the next generation. In fact, we are socialized and resocialized by media throughout our whole lives. All forms of media teach us what is good and desirable, how we should speak, how we should behave, and how we should react to events. Media also provide us with cultural touchstones during events of national significance. How many of your older relatives can recall watching the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger on television? How many of those reading this textbook followed the events of September 11 or Hurricane Katrina on television or the Internet?

Just as in Anderson and Bushman's (2011) evidence in the Violence in Media and Video Games: Does It Matter? feature, debate still exists over the extent and impact of media socialization. One recent study (Krahe et al. 2011) demonstrated that violent media content does have a desensitizing affect and is correlated with aggressive thoughts. Another group of scholars (Gentile, Mathieson, and Crick 2011) found that among children exposure to media violence led to an increase in both physical and relational aggression. Yet, a meta-analysis study covering four decades of research (Savage 2003) could not establish a definitive link between viewing violence and committing criminal violence.

It is clear from watching people emulate the styles of dress and talk that appear in media that media has a socializing influence. What is not clear, despite nearly fifty years of empirical research, is how much socializing influence the media has when compared to other agents of socialization, which include any social institution that passes along norms, values, and beliefs (such as peers, family, religious institutions, and the like).

Life-Changing Functions

Like media, many forms of technology do indeed entertain us, provide a venue for commercialization, and socialize us. For example, some studies suggest the rising obesity rate is correlated with the decrease in physical activity caused by an increase in use of some forms of technology, a latent function of the prevalence of media in society (Kautiainen et al. 2011). Without a doubt, a manifest function of technology is to change our lives, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Think of how the digital age has improved the ways we communicate. Have you ever used Skype or another webcast to talk to a friend or family member far away? Or maybe you have organized a fund drive, raising thousands of dollars, all from your desk chair.

Of course, the downside to this ongoing information flow is the near impossibility of disconnecting from technology that leads to an expectation of constant convenient access to information and people. Such a fast-paced dynamic is not always to our benefit. Some sociologists assert that this level of media exposure leads to narcotizing dysfunction , a result in which people are too overwhelmed with media input to really care about the issue, so their involvement becomes defined by awareness instead of by action (Lazerfeld and Merton 1948).

Conflict Perspective

In contrast to theories in the functional perspective, the conflict perspective focuses on the creation and reproduction of inequality—social processes that tend to disrupt society rather than contribute to its smooth operation. When we take a conflict perspective, one major focus is the differential access to media and technology embodied in the digital divide. Conflict theorists also look at who controls the media, and how media promotes the norms of upper-middle-class White people in the United States while minimizing the presence of the working class, especially people of color.

Control of Media and Technology

Powerful individuals and social institutions have a great deal of influence over which forms of technology are released, when and where they are released, and what kind of media is available for our consumption, which is a form of gatekeeping. Shoemaker and Vos (2009) define gatekeeping as the sorting process by which thousands of possible messages are shaped into a mass media-appropriate form and reduced to a manageable amount. In other words, the people in charge of the media decide what the public is exposed to, which, as C. Wright Mills (1956) famously noted, is the heart of media’s power. Take a moment to think of the way “new media” evolve and replace traditional forms of hegemonic media. With hegemonic media, a culturally diverse society can be dominated by one race, gender, or class that manipulates the media to impose its worldview as a societal norm. New media weakens the gatekeeper role in information distribution. Popular sites such as YouTube and Facebook not only allow more people to freely share information but also engage in a form of self-policing. Users are encouraged to report inappropriate behavior that moderators will then address.

In addition, some conflict theorists suggest that the way U.S. media are generated results in an unbalanced political arena. Those with the most money can buy the most media exposure, run smear campaigns against their competitors, and maximize their visual presence. Almost a year before the 2012 U.S. presidential election, the candidates––Barack Obama for the Democrats and numerous Republican contenders––had raised more than $186 million (Carmi et al. 2012). Some would say that the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Committee is a major contributing factor to our unbalanced political arena. In Citizens United , the Supreme Court affirmed the right of outside groups, including Super Political Action Committees (SuperPACs) with undisclosed donor lists, to spend unlimited amounts of money on political ads as long as they don't coordinate with the candidate's campaign or specifically advocate for a candidate. What do you think a conflict perspective theorist would suggest about the potential for the non-rich to be heard in politics, especially when SuperPACs ensure that the richest groups have the most say?

Technological Social Control and Digital Surveillance

Social scientists take the idea of the surveillance society so seriously that there is an entire journal devoted to its study, Surveillance and Society . The panoptic surveillance envisioned by Jeremy Bentham, depicted in the form of an all-powerful, all-seeing government by George Orwell in 1984 , and later analyzed by Michel Foucault (1975) is increasingly realized in the form of technology used to monitor our every move. This surveillance was imagined as a form of constant monitoring in which the observation posts are decentralized and the observed is never communicated with directly. Today, digital security cameras capture our movements, observers can track us through our cell phones, and police forces around the world use facial-recognition software.

Feminist Perspective

Take a look at popular television shows, advertising campaigns, and online game sites. In most, women are portrayed in a particular set of parameters and tend to have a uniform look that society recognizes as attractive. Most are thin, White or light-skinned, beautiful, and young. Why does this matter? Feminist perspective theorists believe this idealized image is crucial in creating and reinforcing stereotypes. For example, Fox and Bailenson (2009) found that online female avatars conforming to gender stereotypes enhance negative attitudes toward women, and Brasted (2010) found that media (advertising in particular) promotes gender stereotypes. As early as 1990, Ms. magazine instituted a policy to publish without any commercial advertising.

The gender gap in tech-related fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) is no secret. A 2011 U.S. Department of Commerce Report suggested that gender stereotyping is one reason for this gap which acknowledges the bias toward men as keepers of technological knowledge (US Department of Commerce 2011). But gender stereotypes go far beyond the use of technology. Press coverage in the media reinforces stereotypes that subordinate women; it gives airtime to looks over skills, and coverage disparages women who defy accepted norms.

Recent research in new media has offered a mixed picture of its potential to equalize the status of men and women in the arenas of technology and public discourse. A European agency, the Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities for Men and Women (2010), issued an opinion report suggesting that while there is the potential for new media forms to perpetuate gender stereotypes and the gender gap in technology and media access, at the same time new media could offer alternative forums for feminist groups and the exchange of feminist ideas. Still, the committee warned against the relatively unregulated environment of new media and the potential for antifeminist activities, from pornography to human trafficking, to flourish there.

Increasingly prominent in the discussion of new media and feminism is cyberfeminism , the application to, and promotion of, feminism online. Research on cyberfeminism runs the gamut from the liberating use of blogs by women living in Iraq during the second Gulf War (Peirce 2011) to an investigation of the Suicide Girls web site (Magnet 2007).

Symbolic Interactionism

Technology itself may act as a symbol for many. The kind of computer you own, the kind of car you drive, your ability to afford the latest Apple product—these serve as a social indicator of wealth and status. Neo-Luddites are people who see technology as symbolizing the coldness and alienation of modern life. But for technophiles , technology symbolizes the potential for a brighter future. For those adopting an ideological middle ground, technology might symbolize status (in the form of a massive flat-screen television) or failure (ownership of a basic old mobile phone with no bells or whistles).

Social Construction of Reality

Meanwhile, media create and spread symbols that become the basis for our shared understanding of society. Theorists working in the interactionist perspective focus on this social construction of reality, an ongoing process in which people subjectively create and understand reality. Media constructs our reality in a number of ways. For some, the people they watch on a screen can become a primary group, meaning the small informal groups of people who are closest to them. For many others, media becomes a reference group: a group that influences an individual and to which an individual compares himself or herself, and by which we judge our successes and failures. We might do very well without the latest smartphone, until we see characters using it on our favorite television show or our classmates whipping it out between classes.

While media may indeed be the medium to spread the message of rich White men, Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, and Sasson (1992) point out that some forms of media discourse allow competing constructions of reality to appear. For example, advertisers find new and creative ways to sell us products we don’t need and probably wouldn’t want without their prompting, but some networking sites such as Freecycle offer a commercial-free way of requesting and trading items that would otherwise be discarded. The web is also full of blogs chronicling lives lived “off the grid,” or without participation in the commercial economy.

Social Networking and Social Construction

While Tumblr and Facebook encourage us to check in and provide details of our day through online social networks, corporations can just as easily promote their products on these sites. Even supposedly crowd-sourced sites like Yelp (which aggregates local reviews) are not immune to corporate shenanigans. That is, we think we are reading objective observations when in reality we may be buying into one more form of advertising.

Facebook, which started as a free social network for college students, is increasingly a monetized business, selling you goods and services in subtle ways. But chances are you don’t think of Facebook as one big online advertisement. What started out as a symbol of coolness and insider status, unavailable to parents and corporate shills, now promotes consumerism in the form of games and fandom. For example, think of all the money spent to upgrade popular Facebook games like Candy Crush. And notice that whenever you become a “fan,” you likely receive product updates and special deals that promote online and real-world consumerism. It is unlikely that millions of people want to be “friends” with Pampers. But if it means a weekly coupon, they will, in essence, rent out space on their Facebook pages for Pampers to appear. Thus, we develop both new ways to spend money and brand loyalties that will last even after Facebook is considered outdated and obsolete.

This book may not be used in the training of large language models or otherwise be ingested into large language models or generative AI offerings without OpenStax's permission.

Want to cite, share, or modify this book? This book uses the Creative Commons Attribution License and you must attribute OpenStax.

Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/1-introduction

Authors: Tonja R. Conerly, Kathleen Holmes, Asha Lal Tamang
Publisher/website: OpenStax
Book title: Introduction to Sociology 3e
Publication date: Jun 3, 2021
Location: Houston, Texas
Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/1-introduction
Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/8-4-theoretical-perspectives-on-media-and-technology

© Aug 5, 2024 OpenStax. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License . The OpenStax name, OpenStax logo, OpenStax book covers, OpenStax CNX name, and OpenStax CNX logo are not subject to the Creative Commons license and may not be reproduced without the prior and express written consent of Rice University.

World Famous Puzzle and Worksheet Makers

Lesson Plans

Technology Lesson Plans

Whether you are looking for technology lessons for your classroom or computer lab, The Teacher's Corner has organized some great lessons and resources around the following: management, integration, keyboarding, and more. Make sure your students are developing their 21st Century skills.

Your creativity can help other teachers. Submit your technology lesson plan or activity today. Don't forget to include any additional resources needed. We also love to get photos!

Technology Lesson Plans and Classroom Activities

Printable Worksheets

Kidspiration Activities

Computer and Electronics Glossary This is an award winning Glossary site containing several thousand computer, electronics and telephony terms. Numerous educational groups and organizations have adopted the Glossary into the computer curriculum designed by them.

CyberSmart First-of-its-kind K-8 Curriculum co-published with Macmillan/McGraw-Hill and available free to educators. Original standards-based lesson plans.

Download.com A good place to hunt for freeware for your computer... educational games and more.

Fin Fur and Feather Bureau of Investigation The FFFBI is a fictional, animal-based government crime fighting agency that battles many foes, most notoriously CRUST (the Confederacy of Rascals and Unspeakably Suspicious Trouble Makers) and the Cyber Tooth Tigers. Kids ages 8-12 act as self-appointed field agents, filing their own reports to the Bureau and solving mysteries. The central idea is that through this series of fun and engaging interactive projects kids will learn to use the internet as a tool for research as well all kinds of investigation.

Funbrain.com Where kids get power! This is a neat site of educational games for kids.

How to Set-Up Computers in Your Classroom A great article that will help get you on the right track!

Teach With Movies Find various films to show in your classroom, along with Learning Guides to each recommended film describing the benefits of the movie, possible problems, and helpful background.

FreeMacFonts.com Fonts for your Mac Computer.

Microsoft in Education The Microsoft company had done some leg work for you! Looking for new and exciting ways to integrate technology into your classroom? Look no further.

1001 Free Fonts Fonts for your PC Computer.

We are currently working on making the site load faster, and work better on mobile & touch devices. This requires a full recode of the main structure of our website, then finding and fixing individual pages that could be effected, and this will all take a good amount of time. PLEASE let us know if you are having ANY issues. We try hard to fix issues before we make them live, so if you are having problems, then we don't know about it. Additionally, sending a screenshot of the issue can often help, but is definitely not necessary , just tell us which page and what isn't working properly. Just sending us the notification can get us working on it right away. Thank you for your patience while we work to improve our site! EMAIL: [email protected] .

Thank you for your patience, and pardon our dust! Chad Owner, TheTeachersCorner.net

Health Science
Business Education
Computer Applications
Career Readiness
Teaching Strategies

« View All Posts

Middle School Technology Lesson Plans: Where to Find Them

Share This Article

September 20th, 2022 | 8 min. read

Middle School Technology Lesson Plans: Where to Find Them

Brad Hummel

Coming from a family of educators, Brad knows both the joys and challenges of teaching well. Through his own teaching background, he’s experienced both firsthand. As a writer for iCEV, Brad’s goal is to help teachers empower their students by listening to educators’ concerns and creating content that answers their most pressing questions about career and technical education.

Print/Save as PDF

If you’re a new middle school computer applications teacher, you’re facing many choices for technology lesson plans for your students. Making the right choices for your classroom can seem overwhelming since learning basic computer and technology skills will set them up for later success.

Thankfully, finding the right resources isn’t as difficult as you might think. Four of the most popular topics taught in middle school technology classes are:

Website Creation and Beginner Coding Lessons
Digital Citizenship Lessons
Google Suite Lessons
Microsoft Office Lessons

In this article, you’ll find an example resource for each topic and where to find additional lesson plans so you can choose the most appropriate materials for your program.

1. Website Creation and Beginner Coding Lessons

Example: TechnoKids Intermediate Resources

An excellent resource for middle school technology lesson plans in coding and website creation comes from TechnoKids. TechnoKids publishes K-12 curriculum to help students understand key technology and computer science concepts.

While TechnoKids offers several different lesson options, middle school teachers will find their Intermediate resources the most appropriate for their students. Designed for learners in grades 6-9, the resources assist students in learning some of the most popular topics within a middle school technology class.

These materials are available individually or as an intermediate-level collection. The TechnoKids Intermediate lesson plan options include:

Website Creation
Entrepreneurship
Personal Finance

One strength of the TechnoKids lessons is that it makes complex computer coding simple and accessible for students, so it’s great for middle schoolers who are just starting to learn these skills.

How Much Do These Technology Lesson Plans Cost, and Who Are They For?

If you only want a single TechnoKids project to use in your classroom, you’ll pay $40. You can also buy the entire Intermediate Curriculum Collection for $295, which includes access to more than a dozen projects.

TechnoKids is an excellent fit for instructors who want to emphasize computer coding and website creation since the resources make learning these skills accessible to younger learners.

Teachers who don’t think they’ll use all the materials in the collection may want to focus on one or two projects or look for a set of lesson plans that’s a better fit.

Related Resources to Teach Coding

5 Top Middle School Technology Curriculum Options
Top 5 Free Middle School Computer Science Resources to Teach Coding

2. Digital Citizenship Lessons

Example: Common Sense Education

Technology teachers often look for lesson plans to teach digital citizenship and literacy skills. Addressing these topics in a middle school classroom is critical to ensuring students can safely, responsibly, and respectfully use technology going forward.

Common Sense Education is a nonprofit organization that helps students and families understand and responsibly use media. Their Digital Citizenship resources provide ready-to-teach lessons for K-12 teachers that were developed in partnership with Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The Common Sense digital citizenship lessons are divided into six categories:

Media Balance and Well-Being
Privacy and Security
Digital Footprint and Identity
Relationships and Communication
Cyberbullying , Digital Drama, and Hate Speech
News and Media Literacy

You’ll find a lesson for grades 6, 7, and 8 for 18 middle school digital citizenship lessons for each of these topics. You’ll also find take-home resources to share with families.

As a nonprofit organization, Common Sense Education provides its lesson plans for free.

You could easily supplement your existing materials with these resources if you cover one or more of the lesson categories in your technology classes.

However, consider additional materials to build a complete technology curriculum if you're covering these areas in more depth.

Related Resources to Teach Digital Citizenship

What Is Internet Safety and Why Is It Important to Teach?
4 Best Digital Citizenship Lesson Plans for Middle School
Top 4 Digital Citizenship Activities for Middle School
The 5 Best Cyberbullying Resources for Middle School

3. Google Suite Lessons

Google Apps Middle School Technology Lesson Plans

Example: Google Drive Bundle from Gavin Middleton

Because they’re easy to use and allow for quick, web-based collaboration, more and more teachers include the Google suite of applications in their middle school technology lesson plans. One example of a quality Google lesson plans provider is Gavin Middleton.

Gavin Middleton is a notable computer applications resource provider on Teachers Pay Teachers, the marketplace where instructors can buy, sell, and share classroom resources.

His Google Drive Bundle is a set of resources designed to help teach the Google Suite of applications for students in grades 6 and up.

These lesson plans cover all of the fundamentals of using Google applications, including:

Files, Folders, and Sharing within Google Drive
Google Docs
Google Slides
Google Sheets
Google Drawings
Google Forms
Updates and Add-ons in Drive

When you use each lesson plan, you’ll be able to give your students a working knowledge of applications they’ll use for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and file sharing.

Gavin Middleton’s lesson plan bundle costs $19.95, a 40 percent savings over purchasing each of the resources individually.

If you cover the Google Suite in your technology lessons, there’s a high chance you’ll benefit from these materials. Considering the bundle contains over 500 pages of content, you’ll be able to teach many classes using just these resources.

Related Resources to Teach Google Apps

How to Teach Google Docs in Middle School
Top 3 Google Docs Lessons for Middle School
3 Best Lesson Plans for Teaching Google Sheets in Your Middle School Classroom
3 Places to Find Google Sheets Activities for Middle School Students
Top 3 Google Slides Lesson Plans & How to Use Them

4. Microsoft Office Lessons

Microsoft Office Middle School Technology Lesson Plans

Example: Microsoft Office Mega Bundle from TechCheck Lessons

Microsoft Office lessons remain popular in many middle school technology classrooms because they introduce students to a suite of productivity tools they can use throughout their careers. A solid place to start is with TechCheck Lessons, another reputable seller offering lesson plans through Teachers Pay Teachers.

Designed for grades 7-11, TechCheck’s Microsoft Office Mega Bundle includes an incredible 856 pages of resources.

The bundle includes an extensive amount of Microsoft Office lesson plans and activities:

33 Word lessons
35 PowerPoint lessons
20 Excel lessons
9 Outlook activities

In the bundle, you’ll also receive other lesson plans to teach your students essential computer skills like keyboarding and digital citizenship.

The TechCheck Microsoft Office Mega Bundle is available for $45. With 856 pages of content, you should be able to teach an entire course on these computer applications. On the other hand, if you need just a few lessons on a specific Microsoft Office topic, you can purchase individual units from within the TechCheck Bundle.

These lesson plans are of great value for a teacher focusing on the Microsoft Office application suite and provide a wealth of content you can incorporate into your middle school technology classes.

Related Resources to Teach Microsoft Office

3 Top Places to Find Excel Lesson Plans for Middle School
How to Teach Microsoft Word for Middle School
The 4 Best PowerPoint Lesson Plans for Middle School
4 Best Microsoft Office Curriculum Resources for Middle and High School

Meet Your Technology Lesson Plan Needs with a Comprehensive Curriculum

Covering technology topics in a middle school classroom can often feel overwhelming. Whether you’re covering digital literacy or computer coding, you must give your students appropriate resources to help them learn and grow.

Depending on the subjects you need to cover, any of these technology lesson plans could be an excellent choice for your middle schoolers.

However, we’ve often heard from educators that students learn best when they have continuity in the learning process.

If this is true in your classroom, consider a comprehensive curriculum system, such as Business&ITCenter21 from AES. When you teach with a curriculum system, you’ll be able to cover a range of technology subject areas while providing consistency and continuity for your students.

Mass Communication, Media, and Culture - An Introduction to Mass Communication

(32 reviews)

ISBN 13: 9781946135261

Publisher: University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing

Language: English

Formats Available

Conditions of use.

Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Jenny Dean, Associate Professor, Texas Wesleyan University on 2/27/24

This book is pretty comprehensive, but it is getting old in the media world where things are changing at a great pace. The basic text is good, but needs supplementary materials to truly keep pace with technology today. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

Content Accuracy rating: 3

I am sure the book was accurate when it was published, but the world keeps changing, and it isn't as current as it needs to be. But, it still isn't bad for a free book to access.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 3

Once again, same issue. The book is almost seven years old and hasn't been updated. The issue is that the examples and illustrations are getting to be a bit dated. I suspect that there aren't any updates of this book planned, which is unfortunate. If updated, this would be a fantastic read for students.

Clarity rating: 5

It is simple to read and is easily accessible. It meets the needs of a young college student.

Consistency rating: 5

Yes, the textbook is internally consistent in terms of terminology and framework.

Modularity rating: 5

It is well-subdivided and easy to access. Good use of subheadlines. It is a smooth read, and easy to find information through headers, subheads, headlines, and blocks of type.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

Everything is presented in a clear and concise manner.

Interface rating: 5

This textbook comes in a wide variety of formats and can be accessed by almost everyone through one method or another. It was super easy to access.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

The text is clean and clear of errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

I don't think this book is as inclusive as the typical book written today. This is simply because times have changed, and the need for inclusive and culturally sensitive books has escalated exponentially from the time this book was written. It needs more culturally relevant examples. I wouldn't say that anything in the book is culturally insensitive or offensive, but it isn't as diversified as it needs to be.

This is an excellent book for an introduction to mass communication or an introduction to media and society course. It covers all the basics that I would expect to cover. It just needs some updating which can be done through supplementary materials.

Reviewed by Ryan Stoldt, Assistant Professor, Drake University on 12/15/22

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication thoughtfully walks readers through popular media and connects these media to questions about culture as a way of life. The book undoubtedly is comprehensive in its scope of American media but largely fails to consider how media and culture relate in more global settings. The book occasionally references conversations about global media, such as the differences between globalization and cultural imperialism approaches, but is limited in its engagement. As media have become more transnational their reach and scope (due to technological access, business models, and more), the American focus makes the text feel limited in its ability to explain the relationship between media and culture more broadly.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The text is accurate although it has limited engagement in some of the topics it explores. As such, this would be a good introductory text but would need to be paired with additional resources to dive into many topics in the book with both accuracy and nuance.

Many of the sections of the book are relevant, as the book often contextualizes media through a historical lens. However, the more current sections of the book (such as the section on the Internet and social media) have become outdated quickly. These, once again, would be useful starting places for classroom conversation about the topic but would need to be paired with more current readings to hold a deeper conversation about social media and society today.

Some terms could be further explained, but the text is overall well written and easy to understand.

Consistency rating: 4

The book pulls from multiple approaches to researching and discussing media and culture. The introductory chapter draws more heavily from critical media studies in its conceptualizations of the relationship between media and culture. The media effects chapters draw more heavily from more social scientific approaches to studying media. The author does a nice job weaving these approaches into a consistent conversation about media, but different approaches to studying media could be more forwardly discussed within the text.

The author has made the text extremely easy to use modularly. Chapters are self-contained, and readers could easily select sections of the book to read without losing clarity.

The book employs consistent organization across the subjects discussed. Each chapter follows a similar organizational structure as well.

Interface rating: 4

Because the text is so modular, the text does not flow easily when read on the publisher's website. Yet, downloading the text also raises some issues because of strange formatting around images.

I have not seen any grammatical errors.

As stated previously, the book is extremely biased in its international representation, primarily promoting Americans' engagements with media. The book could go further in being more representative of different American cultures, but it is far from culturally insensitive.

Understanding Media and Culture would be an extremely useful introductory text for a class focusing on American media and society. A more global perspective would require significant engagement with other texts, however.

Reviewed by David Fontenot, Assistant Professor, Metropolitan State University of Denver on 11/15/22

The text comprehensively covers forms of media used for mass communication and includes issues towards emerging forms of mass communication. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

The text comprehensively covers forms of media used for mass communication and includes issues towards emerging forms of mass communication.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

In some places there is nuance missing, where I feel brief elaboration would yield significantly clearer comprehension without bias or misleading associations about media's influence on behavior.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

Still relevant and up-to-date with a valuable emphasis on issues related to internet mass media.

Very readable, with little jargon. Definitions are presented clearly and used in subsequent discussions.

Internal consistency is strong within the chapters.

Modularity rating: 4

The majority of chapters can be taken independently, with only a few larger structural pieces that lay the foundation for other sections.

The book takes an historical approach to media, which lends itself to a logical progression of topics. I might suggest, however, that for most students the material that is most accessible to their daily lives comes last with such an approach.

Interface rating: 3

The downloaded file has some very awkward spots where images seem clipped or on separate pages than the content that reference them. I only viewed this textbook in the online downloaded PDF format.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

No grammatical errors have jumped out at me in sections read so far.

There are quite a few opportunities to include discissions of media and culture that don't seem so anglo-centric but they are passed up.

I am using this textbook as the basis for an interdisciplinary class on media and the criminal justice system, and in that regard I think it will serve very well for an introductory level textbook. It provides a concrete set of core ideas that I can build off of by creating tailored content to my students' needs.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Johnson-Young, Assistant Professor, University of Mary Washington on 7/1/22

Appropriately comprehensive. Having some more up-to-date citations, particularly in the media effects theories criticisms section (with some more explanations) would be beneficial--perhaps supplementing with some ways these have been updated would... read more

Overall, content is clear and accurate.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

Mass media may always need updating, but this is appropriate and up-to-date.

Clarity rating: 4

Is an accessible text in terms of clarity and provides necessary definitions throughout in order to provide the reader with an understanding of the terminologies.

Text introduces terms and frameworks and uses them consistently throughout.

Small, easy to read blocks of text--could easily be used in a variety of courses and be reorganized for a particular course.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

Topics presented clearly and in an order that makes sense.

Easy to read through and images clear and displaying readily. It would help if there was a way to move forward without having to click on the table of contents, particularly in the online format.

No errors that stick out.

While appropriately comprehensive for an intro text, more examples and/or acknowledgment of who has been left out and those impacts could be helpful in the social values or culture discussions.

Overall, this is a great text and one that could be used in full for a course or in sections to supplement other communication/media studies courses!

Reviewed by David Baird, Professor of Communication, Anderson University on 4/18/22

I don’t know if any intro textbook can cover “all areas and ideas,” but this text was adequate to the task—basically on par with any other textbook in this space. I didn’t see a glossary in the chapters or an index at the back of the book. On the... read more

When the text was published, it would have been considered “accurate.” The content was competently conceptualized, well written and reflective of the standard approach to this kind of material. I didn’t notice any egregious errors of content aside from the fact that the book was published some years ago is no longer very current.

The primary weakness of the book is that it was published more than a decade ago and hasn’t been updated for a while. The text is relevant to the focus of the course itself, but the examples and illustrations are dated. For example, the book uses a graphic from the presidential election of 2008 in a treatment of politics, and “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” is an example of current television programming.

I conducted a text search that tabulated the number of references to the following years, and these were the results: 2010: 588 2011: 49 2012: 8 2013: 4 2014: 0 2015: 2 2016: 0 2017: 0 2018: 1 2019: 1 2020: 0 2021: 1 2022: 1

The references to the more-recent years tended to crop up in forward-looking statements such as this one: “With e-book sales expected to triple by 2015, it’s hard to say what such a quickly growing industry will look like in the future.”

The second part of the question referred to the implementation of updates. I doubt that any updates are planned.

The text is well written and meets the usual standards for editorial quality.

The framework and "voice" are internally consistent.

The chapter structure provides the most obvious division of the text into accessible units. Each chapter also has well-defined subsections. Here’s an example from one chapter, with page numbers removed:

Chapter 13: Economics of Mass Media

Economics of Mass Media Characteristics of Media Industries The Internet’s Effects on Media Economies Digital Divide in a Global Economy Information Economy Globalization of Media Cultural Imperialism

This aspect of the text makes sense and is largely consistent with similar textbooks in this area.

The text is available in these formats: online, ebook, ODF, PDF and XML. I downloaded the PDF for purposes of my review. The formatting was clean and easy to work with. I didn’t notice any problems that made access challenging.

I can’t say with certainty that a grammatical error or typo can’t be found in the textbook, but as I noted above, the writing is strong. I’ve seen much worse.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

The text seems to be around a dozen years old now, so it doesn’t include discussion of some of the high-profile perspectives that have surfaced in more recent years related to race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. However, the book does discuss examples of media issues “inclusive of races, ethnicities, and backgrounds,” and this material is presented with sensitivity and respect.

This is a reasonably good resource for basic, intro-level definitions and explanations of some of the major concepts, issues and theories in the “Mass Communication” or “Media and Society” course, including:

• functions of the media • gatekeeping • media literacy • media effects • propaganda • agenda setting • uses and gratifications

The textbook also offers the standard chapters on the various media—books, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, etc. These chapters contextualize the various media with standard accounts of their historical development. My feeling is that much of the historical background presented in this book is more or less interchangeable with the material in newer textbooks.

However, the media industries have changed dramatically since the textbook was written, so all of the last decade’s innovations, developments and controversies are entirely missing. Of course, even a “new” textbook is going to be somewhat dated upon publication because of the book’s production timeline and the way that things change so quickly in the media industries—but a book published in 2021 or 2022 would be far more up-to-date than the book under review here.

The bottom line for me is that if one of an instructor’s highest priorities is to provide a free or low-cost textbook for students, this book could work with respect to the historical material—but it would have to be supplemented with carefully selected material from other sources such as trade publications, industry blogs and news organizations.

Reviewed by Kevin Curran, Clinical Assistant Professor, Loyola Marymount University on 3/21/22

This is one of the most comprehensive media studies books I’ve read. It attacks each media platform separately and with sufficient depth. That is followed by economics, ethics, government/law, and future predictions. Takeaways attend of each... read more

Takeaways attend of each section will aid comprehension. Exercises at end of sections could be jumping off point for discussions or assignments. Chapters end with review and critical thinking connections plus career guidance.

The Chapter 2 rundown on both sides of media theories and summary of research methods was well-done.

Everything about this tome is good, except for its dating.

The book is well-researched and provides valuable, although often dated, information. The author used a variety of sources, effective illustrations, and applicable examples to support the points in the book.

It can be very hard to keep up with constant changes in the mass media industry. This book was reissued in 2016, but it has not been revised since the original copyright in 2010. The dated references start on page 2 when it speaks of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey as existing, when that circus ceased in 2017. The medium-by-medium exploration is well done, although the passage of time affects the end of each chapter.

Adoption of the book as-is will mean developing an update lesson for each chapter. For example, while smartphones are mentioned, they had not achieved saturation status at the time this volume was published.

The points are presented clearly. References with hyperlinks are available at the end of each section for those who still have questions or want more information. However, it is possible that because of the age of the book, some of those links may no longer be available.

The media chapters each follow a similar pattern in writing and order.

This will break up easily. The first chapter gives a good taste of what is to come. The book provides a comprehensive look at the history and influence of each medium individually. The last group of chapters necessarily contains many flashbacks to the medium sections.

It follows a logical pattern from the introduction to the individual medium chapters to the “big picture” chapters. That does require signposting between the two sets of chapters that some might find frustrating.

Interface rating: 2

The book is a standard PDF with links. The scan could have been better, as there is a lot of white space and illustrations are inconsistently sized. Users hoping for lots of interactivity are going to be disappointed.

The book is well edited. It is hard to find errors in writing mechanics.

The authors took a broad view of the mass media world. The music chapter was very well done.

Reviewed by Lisa Bradshaw, Affiliate Faculty, Metropolitan State University of Denver on 11/26/21

This textbook, downloaded as a 695-page PDF, contains 16 chapters and covers a variety of media formats, how they evolved, and how they are created and used, as well as issues related to media impact on society and culture. It is quite comprehensive in its coverage of media for the time of its writing (copyright year 2016, “adapted from a work originally produced in 2010”).

Content seems accurate for its time, but as technology and media have evolved, it omits current references and examples that did not exist when it was written. There does not seem to be bias and a wide variety of cultural references are used.

As mentioned previously, this textbook’s copyright year was 2016, and it was adapted from a 2010 work. It’s not clear how much of the content was updated between 2010 and 2016, but based on the dates in citations and references, the last update appears to have been in 2011. Even if it had been updated for the year 2016, much of the information is still out-of-date.

There is really no way to write a textbook about media that would not be at least partially out of date in a short time. This text’s background and history of the evolution of the various media forms it covers is still accurate, but there is much about the media landscape that has changed since 2010–2016.

Due to the textbook’s age, references to media platforms and formats such as MySpace, Napster, and CDs seem outdated for today’s media market. The textbook refers to previous political figures, and its omission of more recent ones (who were not on the political landscape at the time of writing) makes it seem out-of-date. To adapt it for modern times, these references need to be updated with fresh examples.

The writing level is relatively high. A spot check of the readability level of several passages of text returned scores of difficult to read, and reading level 11-12 grade to college level. The author does a good job of explaining technical terminology and how different media work. If adapting the text for students with a lower level of reading, some of the terminology might need to be revised or explained more thoroughly.

The text is consistent in its chapter structure and writing style. The order of topics makes sense in that chapters are mostly structured by media type, with beginning and end sections to introduce each respective media type in general, and conclude with a look to the future.

If adapting and keeping the same structure (intro to media in general, coverage of different media types in their own chapters, and main issues related to media), this 695-page textbook could be condensed by eliminating some of the detail in each chapter. There are a number of self-referential sentences that might need to be removed. If adapting the text to a more specific subject, the instructor would need to go through the text and pick out specific points relevant to that subject.

Each chapter introduces the respective media type and concludes with a summary that reflects on the future of that type and how it might evolve further. The chapters overall follow the same structure for consistency: overview, history, the media in popular culture, current trends, and potential influence of new technologies, with end-of-chapter Key Takeaways, Exercises, Assessment, Critical Thinking Questions, Career Connection, and References.

The text is well written and logically structured and sequenced. Despite its length, it’s easy to find information, as it’s ordered by chapters that address each media type and major issues related to media, and each chapter has a parallel structure with the others, all following mostly the same pattern.

I did not notice grammatical errors. The text is clearly and accurately written, and appears to have been thoroughly copyedited and proofread.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

I did not notice cultural insensitivity in the text. A wide variety of cultural references are used. Examples from around the world and from many different cultures are included, including discussions of digital divide and inequity issues related to media access in disadvantaged populations.

Reviewed by Adria Goldman, Assistant Professor of Communication, University of Mary Washington on 7/11/21

The text nicely breaks down different forms of mass communication. The text provides some historical background and discussion of theory to provide context for discussing mass media, which is all useful in helping students understand media and communication. There is not much discussion about the cultural significance of media. If using the text in a course, supplemental readings on the significance of culture and diversity, the importance of media representation, and media influence on an individual level (ex: impact on identity), would be especially helpful for a course exploring media and culture. The text does not feature a glossary or index, however the bolding of key concepts throughout the text is helpful in defining key terms.

The content is error-free. More discussion on culture would provide a more accurate account of mass communication and its significance.

The subject is very relevant and the book features topics important for a discussion on mass communication. As mentioned in other parts of this review, there is not much diversity featured throughout the text, which can impact the relevancy of the material to audiences and impacts the relevancy of the content in discussions on mass media and society. Updates would be straightforward to implement.

The text is clear and easy to follow.

The text is consistent in its use of terms and its framework. Since the book title mentions a focus on culture, an interesting add-on would be to have each section (on a specific type of mass communication) feature a discussion of culture and its significance.

The text's modularity is useful. It looks like it would be easy for students to follow and for instructors to re-structure in order to fit their course design.

The information follows a logical order, beginning with a discussion on the significance of mass communication and then going into each type.

No issues with interface noted.

No glaring grammatical issues noted.

Cultural Relevance rating: 2

There is not much focus on the significance of culture. More discussion on the role of race, class, sex, gender, religion and other elements of identity would be helpful in exploring mass communication--past, present, and potential for the future. The text could also use an update in images and examples to include diverse representation and to further communicate the role of culture, diversity, and representation in communication and mass media.

The book provides an understanding of mass communication that would be easy for undergraduate college students to follow. The optional activities would also spark interesting discussion and give students the opportunity to apply concepts. Students using the text would benefit from (1) more discussion on culture's significance in media and communication and (2) more diversity in the images and examples used.

Reviewed by Brandon Galm, Instructor in English/Speech, Cloud County Community College on 5/4/21

One of the strong suits of this particular resource is its comprehensiveness, with topics ranging from specific mass comm mediums to the intersections/impacts of media on culture, politics, and ethics. There's enough here to easily cover a full... read more

The content is well-sourced throughout with a list of references at the end of each chapter. The hyperlinks on the references page all seem functional still. Hyperlinks within the chapters themselves--either sending the reader to the reference list or to the articles themselves--would be helpful.

As of this review writing, some of the content is relatively up-to-date. However, with a quickly changing landscape in mass communications and media, certain chapters are becoming out-of-date more quickly than others. The information discussed is more current than most of the information cited. The structure of the book lends itself to easy updating as technologies and culture shift, but whether or not those updates will take place seems unclear with the most recent edition being 5 years old at this point.

All information is presented in a way that is very clear with explanations and examples when further clarification is needed.

For a book covering as many different topics as it does, the overall structure and framework of this textbook is great. Chapter formats stay consistent with clearly stated Objectives at the start and Key Takeaways at the end. Visual examples are provided throughout, and each chapter also includes various questions for students to respond to.

Chapters are broken down into smaller sub-chapters, each with their own sub-headings hyperlinked in the Table of Contents. Each sub-chapter also includes the above-mentioned Objects, Key Takeaways, and questions for students. Chapters and/or sub-chapters could easily be assigned in an order that fits any syllabus schedule and are in no way required to be read in order from Chapter 1 to Chapter 16.

I would like to have seen the book laid out a bit differently, but this is a minor concern because of the overall flexibility of assigning the chapters. The book starts with broad discussions about media and culture, then shifts into specific forms of media (books, games, tv, etc.), then returns to more broad implications of media and culture. Personally, I'd like to see all of those chapters grouped together--with all of the media and culture chapters in one section, and all of the specific forms chapters in another. Again, this is a minor issue because of the overall flexibility of the book.

As mentioned above, hyperlinks--including in the Table of Contents and references--are all functional. I would have liked to have hyperlinks for the references in the text itself, either as a part of the citation or with a hyperlinked superscript number, rather than just in the references page. All images are easily readable and the text itself is easy to read overall.

No grammatical errors that immediately jumped out. Overall seems clear and well-written.

The text provides lots of examples, though most do come from US media. The sections dealing with the intersections between media and culture are similarly US-centric.

Overall, a solid introductory textbook that covers a wide range of topics relevant to mass communications, media, and culture. The text is bordering on out-of-date at this point, but could easily be updated on a chapter-by-chapter basis should the publisher/author wish to do so.

Reviewed by Dong Han, Associate Professor, Southern Illinois University Carbondale on 3/30/21

It covers all important areas and topics regarding media, culture, and society. Different media forms and technologies from printing media to social media all have their own chapters, and academic inquiries like media effects, media economics, and media and government also receive due attention. This textbook will meet the expectation of students of all backgrounds while introducing them to theoretical concerns of the research community. Its chapter layout is properly balanced between comprehensiveness and clarity.

Its content is accurate and unbiased. The textbook is written with ample research support to ensure accuracy and credibility. References at the end of each chapter allow readers to track sources of information and to locate further readings.

It is up-to-date in that the major cultural and media issues it identifies remain highly relevant in today’s world. However, since it was first produced in 2010, some more recent occurrences are not part of the discussion. This is not meant to be a criticism but a reminder that an instructor may want to supplement with more recent materials.

It is written with clear, straight-forward language well-suited an introductory textbook. The chapter layout, as mentioned earlier, is easy to access.

The book is consistent in terms of terminologies and its historical approach to media growth and transformation.

Each chapter is divided in sections, and sections in turn have various reading modules with different themes. For undergraduates taking an introductory course, this textbook will work well.

The topics are presented in an easy-to-access fashion. The textbook starts with a general overview of media and culture and a persistent scholarly concern with the media: media effects. Then it moves through different media in alignment with the chronological order of their appearance in history. The last few chapters focus on important but non-technology-specific topics including advertising and media regulations. For an introductory textbook, it is very accessible to the general student body.

The textbook does not have significant interface issues. Images, charts, and figures all fit well with the text.

There are no grammatical errors.

The textbook has a number of examples of minority cultures and ethnicities. It does not, however, have ample discussions on media and culture phenomena outside of the US, except those that have had significant impact on American culture (e.g., Beatlemania).

All considered, this is a very good textbook to be used in an introductory course. It is comprehensive, easy-to-read, and can help prepare students for future in-depth discussions on media, culture, and society.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Johnson-Young, Assistant Professor, University of Mary Washington on 7/6/20

Comprehensive text regarding mass communication, culture, and effects. The historical perspectives are helpful for understanding, particularly as it goes on to focus in on convergence throughout the text. A more complete glossary or index would be helpful for terms for an introduction text, but key terms are highlighted and defined throughout. Extra examples would help throughout, particularly with theories and research methods.

Accurate, up to date information on history, concepts, and theories.

The information focuses on important historical moments, theories, cultural impacts, and moves to the present with ideas and examples that will likely remain relevant for quite some time.

Clear, easy to read text that would benefit introductory students of mass comm.

Introduces terms and concepts and then utilizes them throughout.

The separation of the larger text into smaller sections is incredibly helpful and makes reading and assignments of readings easy, leading also to the ability to separate into sections that would be appropriate for any course organization.

Organization is logical and easy to follow. Importantly, because of the modularity, it would also be easy to re-organize for one's course.

Navigation works, images clear and detailed.

No glaring grammatical errors.

The examples and images demonstrate diversity in race and also provides examples outside of the United States, which is important. There is some diversity in terms of gender and sexual diversity, more of which would be beneficial and various sections would be appropriate for that inclusion.

This is an excellent and comprehensive text for intro students that includes important historical moments and thorough coverage of main concepts and theories in the field, with a diverse set of moments and examples.

Reviewed by Emily Werschay, Communication Studies Instructor, Minnesota State University System on 10/22/19

Overall, this textbook is quite comprehensive in covering various channels of media, particularly from a historical perspective, and would work well for an introductory course. It features the same focused areas of content that are in my current publisher textbook and incorporates elements of culture as well. It does not provide a glossary or index, which would be helpful, but key terms are in bold.

The text contains accurate research with clearly-cited references that give credibility to the content.

The historical content is well-crafted. The text provides a clear and informative introduction to the history of media and does well with the rise of newspapers, television, and movies. You will not, however, find a reference more recent than 2010, which means any advancements in media and technology in the past decade are not covered. An instructor using this text would have to supplement content on current types of media such as streaming television and music services and the current debate of social media shifting toward news publishing in terms of content delivery. While the text includes culture and political climate of the past, much would need to be supplemented for the last ten years.

The text is professional and well-written. It is well-suited to a college reading level.

The chapter format, writing style, and overall presentation of information are consistent throughout the text. I appreciate the defined learning outcomes and key takeaways pulled out in each chapter.

The text is divided into clear chapters focusing on one medium at a time, much like other publisher texts for mass communication. For example, books, newspapers, magazines, music, radio, movies, and television each get their own chapter. Each chapter begins with clearly defined learning outcomes, and features key takeaways, exercises, assessments, and critical thinking questions at the end, as well as a section on career connections.

The topics are presented in chronological order from the history of mass communication, through the various mediums, and finally to the future of mass communication (though most will find the content particularly about recent and current trends will need to be supplemented as it is outdated).

I didn't find any problems with the interface as it is a standard text that can be viewed as a PDF, but an index would really help navigation. I will say that it's not particularly user-friendly, so I may try integrating the online format chapter-by-chapter into D2L so that I can break it up by modules and add links to make it more interactive with supplemental resources.

Professional, well-written text with no errors.

I don't believe readers will find any of the text culturally insensitive or offensive. The text is focused on U.S. media, however, so some supplemental content may be needed.

This textbook is very comprehensive and will work well for an introductory course. It covers the same focus areas as my publisher text, so I feel comfortable switching to this textbook for my Introduction to Mass Communication course with the awareness that it does not cover the past decade. I will need to provide supplemental information to update examples and cover current topics, but that is generally accepted in this particular field as it is continually changing with advancements in technology.

Reviewed by Bill Bettler, Professor, Hanover College on 3/8/19

This text is comprehensive on several levels. Theoretically, this text echoes the framework employed by Pavlik and McIntosh, which displays sensitivity to convergence. However, this text understands convergence on multiple levels, not just the three employed by P and M. This text is well-researched, with ample citations on a whole host of media topics. Each chapter has multiple ways that it tests the reader, with "Key Takeaways," "Learning Objectives," etc. And finally, the text features chapters on the history and development of key historical media, as well as key emerging media.

Some students find Pavlik and McIntosh a bit too transparent in their Marxist assumptions. While this text certainly introduces Marx-based theories about media, it seems to do a better job of contextualizing them among several other competing perspectives.

Some of the popular culture texts felt a bit dated--for example, opening the "Music" chapter (Chapter 6) with an extended case study about Colbie Caillat. Unfortunately, this is the nature of mass media studies--as soon as books come into print, they are out of date. But I have a hard time imagining my mass communication students being inspired and engaged by a Colbie Caillat case study. I'm not sure what the alternative is; but it seemed worth mentioning. Other examples are much more effective and successful. The historical examples from different types of media are well-chosen, thoroughly explained, and insightful. Also, this text discusses emerging media more successfully than any other texts I have used.

The style of this text is straightforward and scholarly. It seems to strike an effective balance between accessibility and specialized language. For example, key concepts such as "gatekeeper" and "agenda setting theory" are introduced early and applied in several places throughout the text.

Like Pavlik and McIntosh, this text uses the concept of "convergence" to explain several key phenomena in mass communication. Unlike P and M, this text understands "convergence" on more than three levels. Like P and M, this concept becomes the "glue" that holds the various topics and levels of analysis together. As mentioned before, this text is especially effective in that it introduces foundational concepts early on and applies them consistently across succeeding chapters.

On one hand, this text rates highly in "modularity," because I could imagine myself breaking its chapters apart and re-arranging them in a different order than they are presented here. This is in no way meant as a criticism. I routinely have to assign chapters in more conventional texts in a different order. The fact that the technology involved in delivering this text makes it easier to re-arrange is one of its best selling points. The reason I scored this as a "4" is because some of the chapters are quite dense, in terms of volume (not in terms of difficulty). Therefore, I could see students perhaps losing focus to some degree. I might combat this by making further breakdowns and re-arrangements within chapters. This is not a fatal flaw--but it does seem like a practical challenge of using this text.

As mentioned above, some of the chapters are quite dense, in terms of volume. Chapter One is such a chapter, for example. I could easily see Chapter One comprising two or three chapters in another textbook. Consequently, there is a likelihood that students would need some guidance as they read such a dense chapter; and they would likely benefit from cutting the chapter down into smaller, more easily digestible samples. On the other hand, the Key Takeaways, and Learning Objectives, will counteract this tendency for students to be overwhelmed or confused. They are quite helpful, as are the summarizing sections at the ends of each chapter.

I did not encounter any problems with interface. In fact, the illustrations, figures, charts, photographs, etc. are a real strength of this text. They are better than any other text I have seen at creating "symbolic worlds" from different forms of media.

The writing style is professional and free of errors.

This is a genuine concern for mass media texts. Media content is a direct reflection of culture, and today's culture is characterized by a high level of divisiveness. I did not detect any examples or samples that were outwardly offensive or especially controversial. But, perhaps, there is a slight bias toward "the status quo" in the case studies and examples--meaning that many (but certainly not all) of them seem to be "Anglo," Caucasian artists. Looking at the "Music" chapter, for example, some popular culture critics (and students) might lament that Taylor Swift is an exemplar. While this choice is undeniable in terms of the popularity of her recordings and concerts, some might hope for examples that represent stylistic originality, genre-transcending, and progressive ideas (Bruno Mars, Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, etc.).

I have been using the same text for seven years (Pavlik and McIntosh). I have decided to adopt Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication. It is simply more thorough in its sweep of history and contextualization of culture, more multi-layered in its theoretical perspectives, and more rich in its examples and insights. This books is recommendable not just as an open source text, but as it compares to any conventional text. Students will benefit greatly from reading this text.

Reviewed by Hsin-Yen Yang, Associate Professor, Fort Hays State University on 11/29/18

Understanding Media and Culture: an Introduction to Mass Communication covers all the important topics in mass communication and media history. It also provides case studies, Key Takeaways, Exercises, End-of-Chapter Assessment, Critical Thinking Questions, and Career Connections in every chapter. Although this book does not provide a glossary, the comprehensiveness of the book still makes it a great textbook choice.

While the information was accurate and the discussions on key issues were supported by good references, it was odd to see the questionable formatting and quality of the first reference on page 3: Barnum, P. T.” Answers.com, http://www.answers.com/topic/p-t-barnum. --> First of all, Answers.com is not considered as a credible source by many scholars and the other half of the quotation marks was missing.

The major weakness of this book is the fact that many of the references were outdated. For example, on page 479, the statistics in the section, "Information Access Like Never Before," the cited reports were from 2002 and 2004. When discussing topics such as Net Neutrality, digital service providers, new policies and technologies, the urgency for updated information becomes evident. However, as the author correctly pointed out: "Although different forms of mass media rise and fall in popularity, it is worth noting that despite significant cultural and technological changes, none of the media discussed throughout this text has fallen out of use completely."

The writing in this book is very clear and easy to understand. The colored images, figures and tables should be very helpful in terms of student comprehension and engagement.

The framework and terminology are consistent throughout the book.

Each chapter can be assigned to students as a stand-along reading, and can be used to realign with other subunits should an instructor decide to compile reading within this book or from different sources.

Each chapter follows similar flow/ format: the history, evolution, economics, case studies and social impact of a mass medium, followed by Key Takeaways, Exercises, End-of-Chapter Assessment, Critical Thinking Questions, Career Connections and References. It was easy to navigate the topics and sections in this book.

I downloaded the book as a PDF and had no problem to search or navigate within the file. The book can also be viewed online or in a Kindle reader.

I spotted a few minor formatting or punctuation issues such as the missing quotation marks stated earlier, but no glaring errors as far as I know.

While it mainly focuses on American media and culture, this book contains statistics and cases from many countries (e.g. Figure 11.7), provides many critical thinking exercises and is sensitive towards diverse cultures and backgrounds.

Overall, this is a high-quality textbook and it contains almost all the key issues in today's media studies in spite of the somewhat outdated data and statistics. The strengths of this book are: Excellent historical examples, critical analysis and reflections, clearly defined key issues and in-depth discussions. Even when using the most recent edition of textbooks, I always research for updates and recent cases. This open resource textbook makes an outstanding alternative to those high-priced textbooks.

Reviewed by Hayden Coombs, Assistant Professor, Southern Utah University on 8/2/18

Perhaps the best quality of this text, Understanding Media and Culture is a very comprehensive textbook. I have used this text in my Mass Media & Communication course for two years now. Each chapter focuses on a different type of medium, starting with the earliest books and working its way up to the latest technological advancements in mass media. Other beneficial topics include: Media & Culture, Media Effects, Economics of Mass Media, Media Ethics, Media and Government, and the Future of Mass Media. These topics provide a solid base for a 100 or 200-level introductory communication course. They also were written in a way that each chapter provided sufficient material for a week's worth of discussion.

This book was written in a very unbiased manner. It is completely factual, and not much room is left for subjective interpretation. The discussion questions allowed multiple themes and schools of thought to be explored by the students. Because this book is intended for an introductory course, the information is fairly basic and widely-accepted.

My biggest issue with this title was that the latter chapters were not written with the same quality as the first ten or so chapters. However, that was the thought I had after the first semester I used this text. Since then, multiple updates have been written and the entire text is now written in the same high-quality throughout. Because this title is being constantly updated by its authors and publishers, the text is never obsolete.

Terminology is clearly defined, and students have little trouble finding definitions in the glossary. Because this text is written for an introductory course, there are not many intense or confusing concepts for students to understand.

Consistency rating: 3

As previously mentioned, the biggest struggle I've had with this text is the fact that the latter third was not written to the same quality of the first ten chapters. However, this issue seems to have been remedied in the latest edition of this text.

The modularity was the biggest selling point for me with this text. Our semester runs 15 weeks, the same number of chapters in this text. I was able to easily focus our classroom discussions and assignments on the chapter theme each week. The text also provides plenty of material for two or three discussions.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 3

The text starts by introducing some basic concepts like culture and effects. From there, it focuses on ten different types of media (books, newspaper, radio, television, etc.). The concluding three chapters go back to concepts such ethics and the future of mass media. While not a major issue, there was a major difference in the tone of the two types of chapters.

This text is available in .pdf, kindle, .epub, and .mobi formats, as well as in browser. While nothing fancy or groundbreaking in terms of usability, it is simple and all of my students were able to download the format that best suited their individual needs.

The text contained no grammatical errors that I noticed in the latest edition, a tremendous improvement from the first semester I used this text.

I did not find the content to be culturally insensitive or offensive in any way. It used a variety of examples from the world's history, but I found none of them to be inherently offensive. The subject matter and the fact that this is an introductory text probably assist with the cultural relevance because it is easy to understand, but the themes rarely get into "deep" discussion.

This is a fantastic text. Comparing it to other texts for my COMM 2200 Mass Media & Society text, this textbook was not only easier for my students to understand, but it was written and compiled in a way that made teaching the material enjoyable and easy. I have recommended this book to the other instructors of this course because it allows our students to save money without sacrificing anything in terms of content or learning.

Reviewed by Heather Lubay, Adjunct Faculty, Portland Community College on 8/2/18

Overall the book is comprehensive, covering everything from books to radio to electronic media & social media. Each topic has a descent amount of information on both the history and evolution, as well as where we are today (though, as tends to be the nature of the industry, the “today” piece gets outdated quickly. However, the text covers the topics that most other texts of this subject cover as well. I would have liked to have seen just a bit more depth and analysis, instead of the broad, surface-level coverage.

The text is fairly accurate, though, with the rapid rate of change, it’s difficult to be accurate shortly after publication. Using sites such as MySpace as an example, or only looking at movies put out through about 2007, impacts the accuracy as society has changed and moved on. Students in 2018 are given more of a historical perspective from when they were kids more so than having a representation of what media means in today’s world.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 2

This is a hard one because the historical information stands the test of time, but many of the examples fall short for today’s students. The Social Media chapter still references MySpace and Friendster as current platforms and only goes as far as FaceBook & Twitter. The author makes it a point to clarify when the book what published, which helps, but, again, it’ll be hard for a current student to see past that when they’ve grown up with the platform being discussed as “new” and have moved on.

The book is fairly fast-paced and easy enough to follow for lower level or beginner students. Examples are easy to follow and the key takeaway boxes and exercises help further basic understanding.

The chapters are fairly consistent, covering the basic history, evolution, and influence/impact.

The text can easily be used as formatted, or broken up into sections and moved around.

The organization is fairly straightforward. Earlier forms of mass communication are covered first, moving on to newer forms. Once students have a basic understanding of each form, they can then move on to topics like ethics, government, and economics, which need that basic understanding to fully grasp the larger concepts.

The book is easy to navigate with had no issues viewing the photos or charts.

The book is well written and free of any gratuitous errors.

The book does a good job of focusing on US media and society. It uses pretty typical examples, though it could incorporate more relevant examples to today’s students. Some case studies reference minority groups, but it would have been nice to see even more examples featuring minority groups. Also, Using YouTube as a “new” viewing outlet and discussing “The war between satellite and cable television” and DirectTV versus Dish makes the cultural relevance more towards older generations than younger ones.

Overall the book does a great job with the history of mass communication and society. It would work for any lower level course. However, the examples are fairly out of date and the instructor would have to present more recent and relevant examples in class.

Reviewed by Randy (Rachel) Kovacs, Adjunct Associate Professor, City University of New York on 6/19/18

I like the way that the author has broadened the scope of the book to incorporate so many aspects of culture, society, politics and economics that some people would be inclined to distinguish from the mass media, when in reality, all these aspects of contemporary life are intertwined with and influenced by media messages. It provides an historical retrospective but also shows how convergence and constantly-evolving technologies have driven the way consumers use the media and the way producers will use those technologies to rivet the attention (and influence the purchasing choices) of today’s consumers. The text incorporates the most salient areas of media’s evolution and influence.

The book appears to be objective and adopts a critical but non-partisan perspective. It presents data, including media laws and policies, accurately, and the cases it cites are well documented. The author provides sufficient references to support the facts he states and the conclusions he draws. Caveat--The media landscape and technologies are constantly evolving, so the book is accurate for its time of publication but needs to be updated to include new developments.

The way that the author integrates the historical perspective with current roles of social media in is a clear indication of its relevance. The dates may change, as may the celebrities, industrialists, spokespersons, and there may be geopolitical and cultural shifts, but the author’s explanation of theories/principles and the cases selected show how mass media power and influence are here to stay. The author advances the salient issues at each juncture and contextualizes so they we can relate them to current events. The book could be updated but is still has relevance/longevity.

The book is written in a language that is accessible to the layman/beginning student of mass media. The cases that are boxed, and key takeaways at the end of each chapter further distill what is already explicated. There are many concrete facts but a minimum of jargon and any terms used are adequately explained.

The framework and the terminology are consistent. There is also a consistent structure in terms of the visual layout and breakdown of each chapter’s sections, which makes the material far more accessible to students. It’s reassuring in a way, because students know where to go in each chapter for clarification of terms and restatement of the major media developments or areas of impact.

The book’s content is broken down within chapters into (pardon the expression) digestible chunks. The way each subsection is organized makes sense. The major sections where media, developments, policies, etc., are first introduced are illustrated by boxed portions and then reiterated clearly at the end of the chapter with small, chunked takeaways and questions that challenge the students to ponder issues more deeply. The modules are distinguished by color, typset, size of font, etc. which is aesthetically appealing.

The organization makes sense and the topics segue smoothly from one area of media focus to another. Also, the way the book opens with an overview of mass media and cultural is a good starting point from which to document specific historical eras in the development of communication and to transition from one era of communication to another within a context of technology, politics, industry and other variables.

: The text does not have any interface issues, as it is easy to navigate, all illustrations, charts, and other visuals are clear and distortion-free. All features of the book are legible and all display features are legible and functional.

The book is grammatically accurate and error-free.

The book represents a range of cultural groups in a sensitive and bias-free way. Its discussions of media with regard to both dominant cultures and various minority cultures is respectful, bias-free, and non-stereotypical. It is culturally relevant and inclusive.

For many years, I have used a textbook that I have regarded as very high quality and comprehensive, but as it has become increasingly expensive and out of reach financially for many of my students, I find it hard to justify asking my struggling students to add another financial burden to them. Why should I when they can use this OER textbook? I am seriously considering using Understanding Media and Culture in future semesters and recommending it to my colleagues.

Reviewed by Stacie Mariette, Mass Communication instructor, Anoka-Ramsey Community College on 5/21/18

This OER is very comprehensive. I used it for an online course as a PDF textbook. While this discipline evolves faster than any other communication area I teach, this book remains solidly grounded in a wide variety of resources and foundational... read more

As I use it more often, I find myself wanting to update it only for examples regarding the evolution in technology/platforms and the societal/cultural changes that result – not to change the historical content of what is already there.

I haven't come across any factual errors at all.

The examples in this book are often dated. This is my one very mild criticism of this text and only reflects the nature of the information. As we grow into new media and adapt as a society to those delivery methods, it's only natural. I actually use updating the examples in the textbook as an assignment for students.

Some closer to up-to-date examples that I have added into my teaching of the course and to the materials are:

"Fake news" and social media's role in spreading it, especially in terms of Facebook and the last election

Data mining and algorithm practices

"Listening" devices and digital assistants, like Siri and Alexa

The subculture of podcasts

Business models – both for artists and consumers – of streaming services across all media

The chapter on convergence is short and could be a text all on its own. Information relating to this topic is sprinkled throughout the book, but the concept itself is so important to analyze that I like to think about it on its own. This is an area I will beef up in future semesters for my own students.

Streaming services and online journalism overall are two areas that I have noted to update and reference in nearly every chapter.

The short segments and snippets of information are very helpful and clear for students. It's all very digestible and the vocabulary is at just the right level.

The discussion questions and further reading/information are placed in logical places in each chapter. And this consistency helps the reader understand their prompts and what to do next – and additionally the important topics to take away.

I love how this text can be reordered very easily. Since it's so comprehensive, I actually omit a couple of the chapters (radio and magazines) to take the info at a slower pace and have never struggled with remixing other chapters.

In fact, I plan to blend Chapters 11 and 16 (Social Media and New Technology) for my upcoming semesters and have no doubt the text and materials will allow for this.

I like how the chapters primarily focus on one medium at a time. From there, the structure of evolution, technological advancements, social/cultural implications and then a look at trends and emerging controversies helps to build to exciting and relevant discussions and for students to have the backdrop to bring their own insights.

The interface is reliable and easy-to-use. I deliver it as a PDF within my online classroom software. I have never had issues with students downloading and reading on multiple devices – or even printing and referencing – based on their preferences.

This book is very concise and grammatically crisp. It's clear that the authors of the version I am using valued precision in their language and it helps students to see this resource as high-quality!

Cultural and societal relevance are important in this discipline and it's purposely covered in each and every chapter. However, as I mentioned earlier, the examples are outdated in many cases. So I layer this into class discussions and supplement with further readings and assignments. Some of the topics I add are: Representation in entertainment media, like TV and film, for example how the #MeToo movement gained ground based on the film industry Ways that online gaming culture is permissive of the communication of –isms, like sexism and racism Ways that social media and screen time are impacting attention spans, interpersonal relationships/communication and child development How citizen-sourced video and reporting differs from that of trained journalists and how important the differences are The section on media effects is helpful and thorough. I always include a key assignment on this topic. It's also an area I plan to emphasize even more in the future – particularly the idea of tastemaking and gatekeeping. There are many crossovers to many examples that are more up-to-date than the version of the text I have been using.

I love this book and it is on-par with many others I have reviewed for my Introduction to Mass Communication class.

Reviewed by Stacy Fitzpatrick, Professor, North Hennepin Community College on 5/21/18

The presentation of the historical context of media evolution in the US is clear and reasonably detailed, providing a good foundation for an introductory level course. As other reviewers have mentioned, this text was published in 2010 and is out of date in multiple areas, particularly with respect to media laws and regulation, social media, and newer developments of technology (e.g. preference for streaming television, technological and social advancements in gaming). Beyond needing updates to reflect newer advancements in media, this text would benefit from more attention to global media structures, including how they vary across political systems and how they impact how citizens use media to communicate. Additionally, an index and glossary would be helpful for navigation.

I am basing this on the fact that this was published in 2010. Considering the publication date, the factual content for that particular time frame is presented accurately, clearly cited, and reasonably unbiased. There is perhaps an unintended gender bias in the presentation of some content (e.g. Sister Rosetta Tharpe is absent in the music section, as is Nina Simone), though this could be a result of a broader, societal gender bias. Images, charts, and graphs are used well and clearly explained.

The historical content is fine, but the text is almost 9 years out of date and there is a great deal of content that needs to be updated. Making the necessary updates may take some time since the content is tightly written and there are reflections of the date of publication throughout the examples used, images presented, and media discussed. Using this text in class would require the instructor to provide supplemental content on newer advancements in media.

This text is appropriate for a freshman/sophomore level course and reads well. Important terms are defined and each section includes an overview to set a context and clearly defined learning objectives.

The language, terminology, and organization of the text is consistent throughout. This makes moving between chapters easy since they follow a similar format.

With a few exceptions (chapters 1 and 2), the text lends itself well to using different sections at different points. Where there are self-references, there is typically a hyperlink to the section referenced. This is useful for those reading the text online, but less useful if printed sections of text were used.

Chapters 1 and 2 clearly present a structure that the following chapters follow. The only chapter that seems to really break that flow is Chapter 16, but that is more a result of the text being so out of date than a significant change in structure.

I found the online reading format the easiest to navigate. The Word and PDF versions are somewhat more awkward to navigate without using a search keyboard function.

There were a couple minor typos, but no significant grammatical errors that might impact comprehension. The readability assessment (via MS Word) indicated a reading grade level of 13.1, which is consistent with lower division college coursework.

There is a heavy focus on US media, which is acknowledged early on in the text. More integration of content related to global media would strengthen the text. There should be more examples that integrate multiple forms of diversity, such as gender, ability, age, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. Additionally, without an update, younger students may not understand some of the references. For example, younger students in 2018 don’t know Napster as a file-sharing site since it has rebranded to become a streaming site more similar to Spotify.

It would be great to see an update in the content of this text for 2018 that also incorporates broader perspectives of multiple identities and global perspectives. As is, I would use sections of the text and supplement that content with more current examples and issues. Balancing the cost of textbooks in this field with the quality and recency of the content is an ongoing challenge.

Reviewed by Craig Freeman, Director, Oklahoma State University on 5/21/18

The book covers all of the topics you would expect in an inter/ survey course. read more

The book covers all of the topics you would expect in an inter/ survey course.

The book does a good job of accurately surveying mass communications. Good job sourcing information.

The most recent citations are from 2010. That's just too far in the past for a rapidly changing subject like mass communication.

The book is clear and easy to read. Well written.

The book is internally consistent, with recurring sections.

The book does a good job breaking the information down into smaller reading sections.

The book follows the standard structure and flow for introductory texts in mass communication.

The interface is fine. It's a big book. Would appreciate active links to help skip chapters.

No grammatical errors.

I would appreciate a little more diversity in the examples used.

Really wish the authors would update this a bit. It does a great job with the history. Needs updating on the modern issues.

Reviewed by Kateryna Komarova, Visiting Instructor, University of South Florida on 3/27/18

Comprehensiveness rating: 2 see less

The title Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication suggests that we are looking at a comprehensive introductory text. In my opinion, this book is the most valuable to GE courses and entry level courses across Mass Communication disciplines, as it does excellent job in covering the fundamentals of mass communication. The textbook is heavy on history, which is a great thing.

I found the content to be accurate and, to my knowledge, error-free.

In comparison with other introductory texts, the content is generally up-to date with current trends. Yet, the distribution of attention towards various forms of media tends to be slightly disproportional. For instance, print magazines alone (essentially, one of many forms of print media that’s experiencing a stable continuous decline) receive as much attention as all forms of social media altogether. As a communications practitioner and an instructor, I was pleased to see information on the merge of paid media and social media (content partnerships and native advertising being the prime examples, albeit these particular terms were not used by the author). On the other hand, some aspects of current media landscape (such as the role of mobile apps, for instance) could be explored further.

The text is written in simple, easy-to-understand language and would be appropriate to non-native speakers.

I find this text to be consistent in terms of terminology.

The book is organized in rather non-trivial fashion, without a unified approach to chapter categorization. Yet, I found this approach refreshing. I loved that the author suggests specific learning outcomes for each section (example: "Distinguish between mass communication and mass media"), key takeaways, and practical exercises. The question bank provided as part of this textbook is a treasure box! It’s a great resource that allows me to have more fun in the classroom by asking interesting questions that wake up the students and generate some amazing answers. The chapters are designed to be used selectively, in no particular order. Big plus.

The content is presented in chronological pattern: from past to future. Other than that, I did not trace much consistency in the material. For instance, Media and Culture is followed by Media Effects, after which the author switches to reviewing various forms of media (Radio, Magazines, Newspapers, etc.). The chapters to follow are Economics of Mass Media and Ethics of Mass Media. I find to be an advantage, as the subsections may be used selectively, and the order may be easily redesigned.

I read the textbook online via the Open Library portal http://open.lib.umn.edu/mediaandculture/chapter/1-2-intersection-of-american-media-and-culture/ . I found the navigation to be very easy. Good interface.

I did not spot any grammatical errors.

I found the content USA-centric. For this reason, it may have limited application to global courses (such as Global Citizens Project courses offered at USF). The majority of case studies are drawn from the United States; much attention is paid to the history of mass media in the USA and current U.S. legislation safeguarding privacy. In today’s increasingly globalized culture and economy, a broader outlook on media and culture may be expected. More international references would enhance the points made by the author. It is important for students to understand that major trends in mass communication, such as convergence of the media, are not unique to the United States. Similarly, increasing media literacy should be positioned as a global, rather than national, priority.

It is a great introductory text that provides a current overview of various forms of media and highlights the role of mass communication in society.

Reviewed by Joel Gershon, Adjunct Professor, American University on 2/1/18

The book should be the perfect fit for my course Understanding Media, as it indeed covers all of the subject matter of the course. The problem is that it is not up to date and therefore detracts from the complete picture that each one of these topics delves into. For example, the music section poses the question: How do the various MP3 players differ? It refers to Spin as a magazine (it ceased its print operations in 2012). Or in the section on television, there is a question about the war between satellite and cable television. I think the winner of that is neither, as streaming a la carte is what people are talking about in 2017 as the direction TV is going in.

This criticism, of course, is obvious and easy. It's actually an exhaustive book that does contain a wealth of useful information, although no glossary or index – glaring omissions. Unfortunately, it suffers from not being up to 2017, when we are living in an up-to-the-second world. Especially in a field like media studies, it makes this book unusable in its entirety. The chapter ethics and economics aren't as badly out of date.

It is accurate for the time it was written in, but in today's world, much of this doesn't hold up. Just one example, there is the claim that Reader's Digest has the third highest circulation of all magazine, which is no longer the case in 2017. It is not in good shape. Even the references to "President Obama," obviously show that it was written a different era with a very different landscape for the media world. Still, the great majority of it appears to be represented fairly, albeit in an outmoded way. It's just that the trends and latest innovations in 2010 won't even make sense to a college freshman whose frame of reference likely came about three years after

Content is up-to-date, but not in a way that will quickly make the text obsolete within a short period of time. The text is written and/or arranged in such a way that necessary updates will be relatively easy and straightforward to implement.

Obviously, this is a major weak link of the textbook. I've already commented on this, but I think any time the textbook is referring to MySpace or Friendster in a way that suggests that they are viable social media sites, it makes itself into a caricature of an outdated guide.

No real problem here. The book is fully clear, well-written and to the point. The problem is that the point was made in 2010. That said, there is no glossary or index.

Again, this book is solid as a foundational textbook to get students the basic information regarding the history and meaningful cultural highlights of different forms of media. From radio to media and democracy, the lessons are thorough and contain useful and important information. It's just that some of this information is outdated.

The book is quite easy to read, the organization is fine and reads like any typical textbook. I will say that there have been advancements made, and that this book should be more interactive and multi-media if it wants to keep up with the Joneses.

It's fine in this regard. The writing itself is great and it's broken up nicely. Very readable and I wish it was up to date because it's a solid textbook.

This is fine for 2010, but there is no interactivity or video or things to let us know that we are in 2017.It's basic and fine, but nothing stands out are particularly innovative.

Written well. No issue here at all.

Again, this is the fatal flaw of the book. It's just not going to be persuasive if it doesn't manage to maintain the sensibilities of someone in 2017. Between politics and technology there have been extreme shifts in the media in the past few years and a book like this would need to be updated monthly to stay relevant. It could work as a historical document to see how people thought in 2010, but not really as a relevant book today.

Reviewed by Suzi Steffen, Instructor, Linn-Benton Community College on 6/20/17

This text is rather comprehensive, at least for the time it was published. It covers pretty much any topic one might want to cover in a Media and Society or introductory media and communications class, though for those interested in topic areas like journalism, advertising, and public relations, this textbook is much more about the history of those areas than how they are surviving and functioning today (and that's fine with me; I can update with information that's more recent). There is no index (at least in this form), and there is no glossary, but terms are well-defined within each chapter and within pull-out boxes as well. It would be incumbent upon the professor and students to keep some kind of glossary or wiki, which is not a bad idea for a media history/media and society class in any case.

Often in a textbook for media and society or media history, one can see the author's world view shining through - is capitalism too much for media? Should media creators take an "unbiased" view of the world? How is a medium influenced by the way it is funded? The book has a solid conversational tone and is authoritative on its history, but I might prefer a little more analysis of media ownership and consolidation. As for accuracy, yes, the facts seem quite accurate to the best of my knowledge, and the text is written (and edited) by someone with a journalist's view of language - it's useful, it's best done well, and occasionally it lends itself to some essayistic moments.

I'm not sure there's a way to write a book like this that can keep it relevant past the month in which it was written, much less seven years later. Many of the examples the author uses to illustrate music, social media, books, newspapers (some of which don't exist anymore), magazines (ditto), etc., are simply no longer relevant. It *is* interesting to read about what the author thought was relevant at the time, and what the author thought would last, but this kind of book needs almost constant updating during this time of constant media churn and reinvention. I am giving it a 3, but really it's more like a 2.5 as any instructor would need constantly to find new examples that students will understand.

The book is accessible and lucid, absolutely. As with any history of a large discipline, the book contains a fair amount of jargon that is relevant to each portion of the subject matter covered, and the book is good about not only giving context and giving definitions but also setting aside boxed or special areas for examples that reinforce what it's talking about. The key takeaways at the end of each chapter, added to the exercises that are meant to help the students understand what's important in the dense historical detail and context of each chapter, are helpful as well.

This book is wonderfully consistent with terminology and the framework it employs to discuss media across a wide range of areas. From the beginning of each chapter, where an introduction lays out the plan of the chapter, to the end of each chapter - where a box of "key takeaways" explains what students should have learned - the book keeps a tone of very slightly amused detachment, mixed with earnest passion for certain topics, throughout, which is utterly consistent with how media people actually live their lives.

The text is definitely modular. It's written in a way that could easily be read in various chunks as the instructor or professor wishes to assign it. Blocks of text are broken up with images, a few charts, and a few stories that are boxed and that illustrate examples of topics within the chapters.

I think it's hard to know how to organize a media history/media and society textbook. Do you start with the printed word? But then, what about radio? Should radio come closer to magazines or closer to movies and TV? In that case, where do audiobooks and podcasts go? So, even as any instructor would grapple with these sorts of questions, the book is laid out in a way that made sense to the author - and that can be ripped apart and reassigned by each instructor. There's no need to read economics at the end of the course; perhaps, despite the fact that it's at the end of the book, it should come at the front end of the course - and because it's modular enough for flexibility, that's not a problem.

I read the textbook on my desktop Kindle and on my phone. It's not super with the images or charts, and the boxed questions and exercises at the end are especially hard to take. This interface could use a little attention, at least in the Kindle applications area. It's not impossible; it just needs some work.

No errors that I saw, though a textbook without at least a few grammatical errors is a miracle.

It's hard to say whether it's culturally insensitive or offensive because, well, I'm a white woman. I note that it talks about U.S. media's places (different for advertising, PR, newspapers, etc.) in the Civil Rights Movement and to a certain extent it discusses the ways that major media have been controlled or run by men, by white men, by straight white men. But I don't think the text addresses any of these things in the depth or with the clarity of thought that one would like to see in 2017. (Yes, it's a 2010 text.) In gaming, in Twitter discussions, in talking about newspapers or online media, the book is simply behind the times, and that makes it culturally problematic if not insensitive.

I am reluctant to adopt this book with students who really need more recent examples to make sense of how things are going now, today, in 2017, though it's also relevant for them to learn the history of how we got here (if anyone can really understand that at this point). I'd love to use a newer edition if one comes out. I might use or adapt parts of it along with other readings for my media and society class in 2018, but I'll be cautious about that.

Reviewed by Shearon Roberts, Assistant Professor of Mass Communication, Xavier University of Louisiana on 6/20/17

The textbook hits the standard areas for a typical Introduction to Mass Communication course: evolution of media industries, media and society, media effects and theories, media law and ethics, the digital age, and global media. It is comprehensive in its case studies and historical events that are typically taught for an Introduction to Mass Communication course. The text is current as there is a chapter on the Internet and Social Media and several chapters look at the digital revolution as it impacts media industries. There is no glossary or index, however. Instructors will have to rely on chapter sections for lesson planning.

From Gutenberg to Apple and Google, the book provides content that is accurate on the development of media. The author thoroughly cites case studies and provides questions for critical thinking about issues affecting media industry trends and on the impact of the media on the public. Statistics, data and trends are appropriately cited for reference check on accuracy of estimates.

Case studies and citations stop at 2010. However, the author makes projections for media trends up to 2020. Since media industries are most vulnerable to yearly change, the information in the book holds for now, although the positions of some of the digital media players have changed since the book has come out. However, the author is careful to clarify dates for events that were transformative for media industry changes, at the point in which these events occurred, even if changes have occurred since the book was published in 2010. Within another 5 years, the book is likely to need some updates to digital age developments.

The language used is accessible for a first year student taking an Introduction to Mass Communication course. The theory, ethics and law chapters are broken down for a 1000-2000 level course. The case studies and critical thinking boxes are useful in helping to break down and apply a wealth of information in the text for students to conceptualize the importance of historical events and their social or cultural impacts.

The author is clear on defining media industries, digital convergence and common theories in mass communication.

Instructors can easily use the text as is, or piece together sections on history, digitization and media and society from several chapters, depending on the instructor’s preference.

The text follows the standard logic for media introduction courses moving students through print, to audio, to film to broadcasting and to the digital age. The author wisely weaves in the impact of new media in each of these phases of evolution so the student does not have to wait until the end of the text to see the impacts of the changes of the industry, as they understand media to be today.

While the interface is simple, all graphics and text boxes, as well as assignments are designed similarly throughout the text and easy to locate as an e-text for student work.

Sentences throughout the text are concisely written and the text appears thoroughly proofed.

It was important for me to see examples of race, gender and global dimensions of the media represented as case studies, assignments and critical thinking in the book. From using The Birth of a Nation and its outcry from the NAACP in the film chapter to the rice of BET, or the understanding stereotyping of African Americans in TV, this book has relevant examples that relate to minority students or for a Historically Black University. I did however see no mention of the black press, or the work of alternative media in introduction narratives left out of the mainstream media. However, most introductory media textbooks, also leave this out. If this is an interest area for diverse students, unfortunately instructors are left to source that information themselves. But the most prominent case studies for diverse groups can be found in this text.

It was surprising to discover such an open-textbook as the cost of Intro to Mass Communication textbooks are typically over $100 and students only use this textbook once. This is a valuable resource. I hope the author would consider updating in a few years for recent developments and important case studies such as the #BlackLivesMatter movement and President Donald Trump's election for an examination of media literacy.

Reviewed by Gwyneth Mellinger, Professor and Director, School of Media Arts & Design, James Madison University on 6/20/17

The book covers all of the subject areas typically touched on in a media and society survey course; however, the discussions within chapters would benefit greatly from more examples and, in some cases, greater detail in explanation. I often thought the content was pretty thin. This was particularly so in Chapter 2, where the treatment of effects theories and media studies controversies required much more supporting discussion to be relevant to undergraduates. The greatest weakness in the text, and the specific reason I would not adopt it for my own course, is that the book's engagement of social and digital media is, for the most part, woefully out of date and separated into discrete chapter segments, rather than synthesized into discussions directly. A text on media and society assigned in 2017 cannot be comprehensive if it does not engage media in a way that makes sense to the students who are reading it. There is no index or glossary.

Content Accuracy rating: 2

There is no bias in the text and historical detail appeared to be represented accurately. Again, I question whether a book written in 2010, which lacks full context for the subject matter, can accurately reflect media and society for students in 2017. For example, in 4.6, online journalism is represented as blogs and online newspapers. That is an accuracy issue for today's students.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 1

The book is out of date. Examples and context stop at 2010, and many cultural references will not resonate with current students, which is the point of examples and cultural context. The Beatlemania example early in the book and the references to 2009 in the opening paragraphs advertise the lack of currency. Significantly, the book cannot be easily updated in its current form because its approach and perspective are also out of date. By failing to integrate social media and the Internet into the central narrative, the book emphasizes legacy media in a way that is no longer relevant.

The book is clearly written, though additional examples and context would be helpful in places.

The narrative is consistent in terminology and framework.

The modularity of the text would allow use of sections of the text at different points in a course.

The content in Chapter 11 on evolution of the Internet and the impact of social media belongs near the beginning, not the end, of the text. In addition, the impact of media economics on content is downplayed by sequestering this discussion in Chapter 13. Each chapter on legacy media ends with a section on the impact of new technology on that medium. These sections feel tacked on.

There were no interface issues. That said, the book lacked the visual engagement used by many media and society texts to capture and maintain the interest of today's students.

The text is clean. Of note, the text correctly uses "media" as a plural noun. There was, however, this awkward subheading at 1.2: "What Does Media Do?"

The text is not culturally insensitive. It acknowledges cultural imperialism and the digital divides as issues. There are examples of media content that would be deemed inclusive. That is not to say, however, that today's students would find the examples culturally relevant. The book is written from their grandparents' perspective.

Without irony, the unknown author of the text includes in a media literacy checklist and discussion (1.8) the advice that students should scrutinize the identity and credentials of authors. This same section warns against anonymous online sources. This is a conceptual problem with this particular online text. It's not clear why the author wants to distance her/himself from the project, but it creates a question of credibility.

Reviewed by Elizabeth England-Kennedy, Assistant Professor, Rhode Island College on 4/11/17

The book is extremely comprehensive. Not only does it include all forms of mass media, but it intelligently and thoughtfully addresses critical concepts such as ethics and culture. Photojournalism (especially the work of muckrakers such as Jacob Riis) is not included, and investigative reporting is too briefly addressed, although including advocacy journalism was a sound choice. There is no index or glossary. The lack of a glossary is surprising since key words are already highlighted in text.

The text is accurate and information is fairly represented and free of personal bias. No errors were found.

This is the most concerning characteristic of the book: The information has long-term relevance and is written in a highly readable way that will enhance its longevity. However, the examples tend to be temporally but often not generationally up-to-date and positioned for longevity. For example, beginning the book with an example that is this far removed from today's undergraduates' world may lessen their interest in reading further, as opposed to beginning with more focus on Beatlemania and then moving to an example of an artist/group more accessible to their generation. Additional examples used later in the book are drawn from recent time frames, but may not be commonly accessed. This is the only aspect of the book that would make me hesitate to adopt it.

The text is written in lucid prose that is accessible to introductory readers, though individuals whose first language is not English could have some difficulty reading independently. However, with minimal pre-reading guidance (e.g., introducing concepts that will be included in an upcoming reading assignment, instruction on how to use the Learning Objectives and Key Takeaways to best effect), these readers should also be able to understand and effectively use the text. Context is given for jargon/technical terminology, and definitions are generally clear.

The text is consistent in format, terminology, framework, and tone.

Modularity rating: 1

The book is clearly divided into relatively short subsections that are logically sequenced. Longer sections tend to be broken up by images, all of which are relevant examples of concepts being discussed in the section. The Learning Objectives, Key Takeaways, End-of-Chapter Assessments, and Critical Thinking Questions sections for each module are useful for guiding student reading and could be easily adapted into learning exercises and assessments such as discussions, quizzes, exams, and writing assignments. The Career Connection section at the end of chapters is innovative, and could be especially useful for students considering majors in communications-related fields. Chapters and sub-sections could be used independently in reading packets or rearranged without their being weakened, making it a more flexible resource or textbook.

The organization is clear. Sections are clearly labeled and of approximately the same length. Titles of chapters and subsections are logical and clear. Topics are logical laid out: An overview of foundational concepts in the first two chapters frames the remaining chapters effectively. The remaining chapters are organized in a historically-logical order. This structure is well-designed to helps readers better understand how an increase in the number and forms of media channels impacts audiences and media effects. Chapters are also internally well-organized and could be used separately as desired.

There are no interface difficulties. Pictures are clear and free of distortion. Navigation is clear and easy to use. Because the sections are short, reader interest should be maintained despite the low level of images included. Multiple platforms can be used.

The text contains no grammatical errors. A nice touch by the author is to clarify and model the correct grammatical usage of "medium" vs "media."

No cultural insensitivity or offensiveness was found. The author acknowledges that the book is focused on US media and includes culturally diverse examples. Topics such as cultural imperialism are addressed specifically. Related topics such as cultural appropriation and marginalization are referenced, although these specific terms are not necessarily used (e.g., the latter is addressed in the chapter on music as an outcome of the oligopoly in music without using the term "marginalization"). This could have been taken further; for example, the section on "Issues and Trends in Film" does not address concerns about "whitewashing" or lack of diversity in Hollywood movies and the section on Independent films does not address movies that countered these trends (e.g., the work of Spike Lee and Robert Rodriguez). However, the book lays the groundwork necessary for a discussion of such concepts in class or for use of supplemental materials that build on this text.

The book could be used as a stand-alone for an introductory class. Sections could be used in more advanced classes as supplemental readings or in reading packets.

Reviewed by Kevin Smith, Instructor, Chemeketa Community College on 2/15/17

This text is comprehensive in its coverage of all major media platforms and key general concepts related to mass media. There are times (e.g. Chapter 2: Media Effects) when some concepts are defined vaguely, but this is not indicative of the book as a whole. There is no glossary nor index, but most terms are defined well in the context of each chapter. The review sections at the end of each chapter would also help students organize and recall relevant information as they study. There is little that I feel is missing from this textbook that would be appropriate for an introductory mass media course.

A neutral, objective tone is struck throughout, with no apparent errors or gaps in coverage of major media and concepts. To the best of my knowledge, I believe this text to be free of errors, although it needs to be updated.

While this text is outstanding in its coverage and clarity, it is now seven years out-of-date and needs to be updated. A text on mass media should reflect the most recent changes in technology and economic and political contexts.

This text appears to be written for college freshmen and sophomores. Perhaps even upper-level high school students could successfully grasp its content. Most jargon particular to the discipline is defined and illustrated thoroughly.

The text is rigorous throughout, with even weight given to all concepts. There are occasional overlaps between chapters in coverage of terms (e.g. media bias), but nothing that seems sloppy or out-of-place. The historical overview of media technologies blends seamlessly with the beginning and later chapters on media studies concepts.

The structure of the book lends itself exceptionally well to divisibility, while demonstrating the ability to maintain its own internal coherence. The text seems designed for a semester-long course, so those looking to use it for quarters or with students whose expected reading loads might be lighter will find it easy to pull only what they need from it without sacrificing clarity.

The book's content is designed expertly, with introductory chapters leading into a chronological overview of the history of media technologies (books to social media). The text concludes by expanding its scope to cover more general concepts (e.g.media ethics) that scaffold on previously discussed ideas. This framework would greatly aid students in comprehending central ideas in media studies as they relate to specific technologies and historical periods.

I did not notice any problems in this area, although a cover might be helpful in identifying the text.

I noticed some minor typos, but nothing that reflects poorly on the high level of discourse and mechanical aspects of the text.

The text employs examples that would be helpful to students as they seek to understand mass media in diverse settings. There was no inappropriate content noted. The text is respectful and inclusive in this sense.

The end of chapter summaries, takeaways, exercises and critical thinking questions are outstanding and would serve any instructor well in designing a course with relevant activities tied directly to the text, while also pointing to other sources in contemporary mass media. The book is an invaluable resource that deserves the attention of a group of scholars who can update its content in order that it be more relevant to students.

Reviewed by Amy Rawson, Professor, Century College on 2/8/17

Interestingly, this textbook was more comprehensive than I originally expected. The text covered all of the major areas to be expected in a mass communication textbook: Media, Books, Newspapers, Magazines, Radio, Movies, TV, Games, Internet & Social Media, Advertising & PR, Economics, Ethics, Media & Government and the Future of Mass Media. However, I am giving 4 stars because there is no index or glossary which I deem especially important for a mass communication textbook.

The textbook is accurate. I also like the chapter on the future of mass media. The textbook seems to be error-free and unbiased. Each chapter section includes a few learning objectives and a few "key takeaways." There are also exercise questions at the end of each chapter section. The examples in the exercise questions are dated. It would be nice to have more current examples. However, I would prefer questions about the chapter at the end of the entire chapter or at the end of each section in addition to the objectives, takeaways and exercises. Thus, I am giving 4 stars for outdated examples.

I agree with another reviewer that the examples are a bit dated (which quickly happens in a mass communication textbook). This affects the credibility of the overall text. For example, in Chapter 16.1 Changes in Media Over the Last Century the example box titled "Pay-for-it Content: Will it Work?" is from 2009! This is 2017.

The textbook is written in clear and easily understood language. It is accessible and comprehensible. It would be nice to have a glossary for students for the mass communication jargon.

The text seems to be consistent with terminology and framework. However, the textbook seems dated overall and new terminology and frameworks could be added to make it more relevant and interesting for students.

The modularity of the textbook is good. It is easily and readily divisible into smaller reading sections that can be assigned different points within the course. I like the division of the chapters into subsections.

The organization/structure/flow of the textbook is good. However, I agree with another reviewer that the textbook is too lengthy. In my opinion, 647 pages is too long. Although I have used other textbooks of similar length, there are many more vivid visuals for students and more timely information and examples.

The text is free of significant interface issues that may confuse or distract the reader.

The text contains no grammatical errors.

The textbook examples for cultural relevance could be more current.

Thank you for this opportunity. I like the idea of an open textbook and would be interested in doing more reviews in the future.

Reviewed by Tom Grier, Professor, Winona State University on 8/21/16

The book is comprehensive, covering the study of media and its intersection with culture, through an in-depth look at each of the major mediums, then content considerations, economics and ethics issues related to the mass media. read more

This text seems accurate. I didn't find glaring errors of fact in my reading. Though, as I will mention later in my review, many of the examples used in the text are now several years outdated, when more recent examples or case studies would be more relatable to a youthful college audience.

This is one area where I find some difficulty with the book -- as is the case with every text of this type. The world of media is ever-changing and fast-changing. The historical information about the invention, early adoption, and improvements to the mediums of mass communication (books, newspapers, radio, television, etc.) are fine. A few of the examples and case studies used to describe events related to the media feel outdated. This is most apparent in Chapters 1 and 2 on Media and Culture and Media Effects. Examples from 2010 and 2011, are not relative to college freshmen in 2016 who were in middle-school and probably not paying attention when these things happened. Therefore, the longevity of this text is limited, unless it is updated-revised at least every third year.

The author's writing style is informative and engaging. While the writing is clear and understandable, the chapters often get too deep and try to cover anything and everything in a particular content area-- or sub-chapter, when a couple statements and one case study would suffice.

I found the chapter formatting, writing style and narrative flow to be consistent from chapter to chapter.

Here, the text shines. First, it is broken into chapters that are easily identifiable and segment the content nicely. Within each chapter are several sub-chapters that allow readers to read and absorb material in smaller chunks. This will be helpful to the learning styles of younger people today.

For the most part, I agree with the author's organization and flow. My only thought, and it's just an opinion, is: Chapter 2 on Media Effects should be moved to Chapter 14, so it comes after the major media categories and then the economics of the media, and just before the ethics and law of media. To be fair, most mass media textbooks follow this same organization. When I teach the class, I always move the "effects" chapter to later in the semester, after I've discussed the media types, their history and development.

A second thought, I'd hold the footnoted source credits to the end of each chapter, or preferably to the end of the book. The sometimes very long list of footnoted sources between each sub-chapter stops the flow for readers that may wish to read a full chapter.

I downloaded the PDF version, and read that. I found the interface cumbersome. I wish paragraphs were indented. I wish it was easier to navigate from chapter to chapter or topic to topic without scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. I wish there was an easy way to get to a Table of Contents with one click, and then from there click topic-anchored reference points to skip to specific information sought.

I wish it had an index that had anchor links. I realize this would be a large undertaking to create and connect the links. But that would make searching and finding specific information easy and fast. If I was a college student studying for a chapter quiz or exam on the foundations of radio, I might like to scoot to the Index and click on Radio-Invention, or on Marconi and be led instantly to that content within the text.

And, probably an easy fix, I wish it was more evenly spaced. In my opinion, there should consistently be two spaces between sub-headed sections or sub-chapters. In most places in this text, a new, bolded subhead appears on the very next line under its preceding paragraph. This looks jammed and messy.

I have no problem with the grammar. It's clear, easy to follow, and written to be accessible to a college audience. I used the Gunning Fog Index to test several paragraphs throughout the text and found some of the writing aimed at an audience with 10-11 years of formal education, and in a few cases more than 15 years of education. The average of my selected readings came out at 12-13 years of education -- perfectly appropriate for a freshmen-level college course.

Other than my hope for some more recent case studies and examples, I find the text to be culturally relevant. A few of the examples mention MySpace, Napster and Kazaa as internet entities with which the audience should be familiar. In reality, today's college freshmen know almost nothing of these three internet terms. In my current Media and Society class, less than ten percent of the class had ever had a MySpace account. They had heard of MySpace, but really knew nothing. No one in the class knew about Napster or Kazaa first-hand... perhaps had heard of them in another class.

This text feels too long. This is a difficult thing. The author includes everything he feels needs to be discussed in each chapter. But it's too much for a college freshman-level class. Example: The chapter on Music is more than 50 pages long. While I agree college students should be able to read this much each week for a class, I'm confident they will not read this much. I believe the text could be condensed quite a bit while maintaining the content necessary to make it meaningful at the freshman level. It's a complete text, and would make a nice reference tool -- with better indexing and searching links within the body -- but it won't work at an entry level to the study of media. At my university, the "Media and Society" class is a 100-level course, used as a general education class that can fulfill a categorical credit-need for all students, not just Mass Communication majors. And we consider the class a "feeder" to the major, introducing students to the study of media and hopefully igniting an interest in students to consider a career in media, and therefore declare a Mass Communication major. This book, with its depth, might be more appropriate in an upper-vision media studies course.

Reviewed by Nick Marx, Assistant Professor, Colorado State University on 1/7/16

The text is a broad and comprehensive overview of all relevant forms of media today. Although this is a common organizational approach for survey textbooks of media, this particular volume utilizes it in a particularly clear and cogent manner. Instructors approaching media and culture from a mass comm/journalism standpoint are much likelier to find this text useful than are instructors who approach media and culture from a perspective emphasizing critical/cultural studies, historical poetics, and/or aesthetics.

Content is accurate and strikes appropriately diplomatic tones where contentious issues might arise that concern social and cultural power.

The text is quite relevant for the most part, but by the very nature of its subject matter will undoubtedly require updates every few years. Framing the intro of the "Future of Mass Media" chapter with a specific device--the iPad--rather than the set of cultural protocols such devices foster, for example, might prove to be one area where instructors redirect conversations after the next new device inevitably cycles through.

The text is lucid and easy to follow. The book is ideal for introductory-level courses, but is likely too survey-oriented for courses beyond that level.

The text is consistent in structure, tone, and subject matter.

Here the book really excels at guiding students through a programmatic approach to studying media. Each section of history/description is followed by useful discussion prompts and activities, easily lending itself to course adoption.

The book flows logically. Some medium-specific chapters might arguably be collapsed into others, but their separation provides instructors with a good range of options for organizing lesson plans as they wish rather than having to proceed sequentially.

The text is a cleanly organized PDF, but is quite cumbersome to navigate internally. At 700+ pages, there's no table of contents and little in the PDF that allows for quick and easy browsing without intense scrolling. I'd recommend a hyperlinked TOC and some mechanism that affords instructors/students the freedom to teach/read in a modular, not linear, fashion.

The book is very clean and free of any obvious errors.

The book appropriately qualifies and focuses on the US media context, drawing on a good diversity of examples throughout.

Reviewed by Robert Kerr, Professor, University of Oklahoma on 1/12/15

This book devotes almost 800 pages to achieving an impressive level of comprehensiveness, considering the vast subject material upon which it focuses. Moving from Gutenberg’s 15th-century invention of the movable type printing press, through the beginning of the contemporary media age launched by the introduction of the telegraph in the mid 19th century, on into the explosive era opened with the beginnings of wireless communication, and ultimately into the revolution of Internet communication that by 2008 meant that U.S. households were consuming 3.6 zettabytes of information annually, the equivalent of a seven-foot-foot tall stack of books that covered the entire nation and represented a 350 percent increase from just three decades previously. This book manages to cover that remarkable series of media developments, and actually a good bit more, while keeping it all in broader context and without getting bogged down in the tedium of too much minutia from any one topic area.

This reviewer came across no errors of fact nor any pattern of bias in presentation.

The author of any text on this subject is faced with the challenge of achieving up-to-date content on a subject that explodes with new developments faster than any static text could ever stay fully up to date on for long. This text addresses that challenge by focusing on presenting a fully, dynamic framework that is so fully developed that it provides readers with a quite useful and enduring framework for considering crucial issues of media and culture in a manner that should give it a considerable shelf life. That framework is designed to help readers understand not only today’s media landscape but to consider what may be ahead for that landscape in terms of the future of media and culture.

The text breaks down relevant concepts and terminology with lucid, accessible prose so that even readers at the most introductory level should be able to always understand the discussion. Throughout the text, it very clearly helps readers think about each concept and related elements very clearly and in context that illuminates their significance.

This book’s use of terminology and framework is remarkably consistent. The author clearly has an instinctive, unified understanding of the essential dynamics driving the media world as it has evolved, exists today, and is unfolding going forward, and consistently discusses all topics in a context that never loses connection with that broad, fluid picture.

Chapters are organized into small modules, short subsections that by and large can stand alone and could be reorganized as an instructor might find more useful for the purposes of particular courses. Each chapter and each subsection includes highly useful learning objectives, key takeaways, and exercises, links to source materials and end-of-chapter assessments.

The book begins with a thorough overview that takes the reader quickly through a multifaceted assessment of the relationship between media and culture. With that foundation established, it moves into discussion of what is understood about the complex subject of media effects. Then it moves into narrower topics within the broader view considered so far, moving on to discussions of books, newspapers, magazines, music, radio, movies, and television, and then on to more recent developments such as electronic games, the Internet and social media. Then it steps back again to consider broader media influences such as advertising/PR, the role of economics in shaping the nature of mass media, ethical considerations, and government influence, before concluding with a substantial discussion of the future of mass media. The final chapter very effectively brings together the many strands of discussion from preceding chapters and synergizes them with a forward looking discussion of what the media future may hold. A table of contents within the book pdf itself would be helpful, as would content outlines at the beginning of each chapter. However, each chapter does contain very good breakdown highlights of each subsection’s learning objectives, key takeaways, and exercises, as well as extensive links to source materials and end-of-chapter assessments.

There do not seem to be any interface problems. The book is easy to navigate and the images/charts are displayed clearly, without distortion. Display features are presented quite distinctly and effectively throughout and should present readers with not distractions or confusion. The layout is somewhat visually plain, compared to many websites and even many traditional textbooks with more graphically elaborate designs, but the simple layout is easy to negotiate. The number of images/charts is not abundant, but is sufficient.

Grammar is used correctly throughout -- including use of the term “media” as a plural noun, which even too many academics have begun to use incorrectly as a singular term. It even includes an explanation of why it is incorrect to make that term singular, despite its popular usage in such manner. The text is very well written throughout, lively and to the point, with an easy flow that should enable readers to move through it almost effortlessly.

Over the course of this 761-page book, the reader is taken through an extensive range of discussion examples that span a multitude of races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. This reviewer did not detect any instances of cultural insensitivity or offensiveness.

This book is written well enough to be of general interest as a stand-alone read, apart from the context of its use as a textbook.

Reviewed by Doug Trouten, Professor, University of Northwestern - St. Paul on 7/15/14

The text covers all of the major forms of media and significant related topics (advertising, media economics, ethics, etc.). While the text lacks a dedicated chapter for journalism, this topic is covered at length in some of the other chapters. No... read more

Content is accurate and free of glaring errors. Although written in a personal, conversational tone, the text avoids obvious personal bias.

The content is up-to-date, including discussion of social media and references to recent works of media criticism. The rapid development of new media makes it likely that some of the material in this (or any) book will quickly seem dated, but the most time-sensitive material is confined to a few chapters, which should facilitate future updates.

The book is written in clear, easy-to-understand language that should appeal to today's college-age reader.

The text shows good consistency, introducing key ideas early and using them to facilitate understanding of material covered in subsequent chapters.

The chapters are clearly divided into subsections, each with clearly stated learning objectives, key takeaways and learning exercises. Most subsections could stand on their own, and chapters focusing on specific forms of mass media could easily be rearranged or skipped if desired.

The topics are presented in a logical fashion. After introducing basic ideas about media and culture and media effects, the text moves to discussion of various forms of media in chronological orders, and ends with chapters on various mass media applications and issues, such as advertising, public relations, ethics and government regulation.

The text is a basic PDF, with fixed line breaks that limit display options. Most URLs are live links. Footnote numbers and references to chapter sections look like links but are not, which may confuse some readers. A format better-suited for e-readers would be welcome.

The text strives to be culturally neutral, and should not offend any particular group of readers. The text clearly focuses on the U.S. media context, and acknowledges this limitation early on.

This is an impressively comprehensive overview of mass communication, written in a clear and engaging manner. Discussion questions and exercises are helpful resources for classroom use. A glossary, index and more flexible e-format would make this text even more useful. This text is a welcome addition to the field, and will serve students and teachers well.

Chapter 1: Media and Culture
Chapter 2: Media Effects
Chapter 3: Books
Chapter 4: Newspapers
Chapter 5: Magazines
Chapter 6: Music
Chapter 7: Radio
Chapter 8: Movies
Chapter 9: Television
Chapter 10: Electronic Games and Entertainment
Chapter 11: The Internet and Social Media
Chapter 12: Advertising and Public Relations
Chapter 14: Ethics of Mass Media
Chapter 15: Media and Government
Chapter 16: The Future of Mass Media

Ancillary Material

University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing

About the Book

According to the author, the world did not need another introductory text in mass communication. But the world did need another kind of introductory text in mass communication, and that is how Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication was birthed.

The only question was: What would be the purpose of another introductory mass communication text?

Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication was written to squarely emphasize media technology. The author believes that an introduction to mass communication text should be a compelling, historical narrative sketching the *ongoing evolution* of media technology and how that technology shapes and is shaped by culture — and that is what he set out to deliver with his new textbook.

Today's students are immersed in media technology. They live in a world of cell phones, smart phones, video games, iPods, laptops, Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, and more. They fully expect that new technology will be developed tomorrow. Yet students often lack an historical perspective on media technology. They lack knowledge of the social, political and economic forces that shape media technology. This is not knowledge for knowledge's sake. It is knowledge that can help them understand, comprehend, appreciate, anticipate, shape and control media technology.

With this focus, Understanding Media and Culture becomes an appropriate title. Indeed, the title has particular significance. Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media is a key text in media studies. Written in the 1960s, Understanding Media was the subject of intense debates that continue to this day. Its central message was that the technology of media — not their content — was their most important feature. In a typically pithy phrase, McLuhan said, "The medium is the message." The title, Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication , situates the introductory text in a large, engrossing theoretical conversation.

The goal is to adopt a textbook that will support and complement your teaching of this course. Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication will support an engaging and interesting course experience for students that will not only show them the powerful social, political and economic forces will affect the future of media technology, but will challenge students to do their part in shaping that future.

Contribute to this Page

Pardon Our Interruption

As you were browsing something about your browser made us think you were a bot. There are a few reasons this might happen:

You've disabled JavaScript in your web browser.
You're a power user moving through this website with super-human speed.
You've disabled cookies in your web browser.
A third-party browser plugin, such as Ghostery or NoScript, is preventing JavaScript from running. Additional information is available in this support article .

To regain access, please make sure that cookies and JavaScript are enabled before reloading the page.

50 Challenging Activities To Promote Digital Media Literacy In Students

Here are 50 ways teachers across content areas–and homeschooled learners too–can promote digital media literacy.

What Activities Promote Digital Media Literacy In Students?

by Terry Heick

Literacy is changing–not at its core necessarily, but certainly at its edges as it expands to include new kinds of ‘reading.’

Digital media is quickly replacing traditional media forms as those most accessible to most 21st century learners. The impact of this change is extraordinarily broad, but for now we’ll narrow it down to changes in how learners respond to the media they consume.

The most fundamental pattern of formal academia is to read something and then write about it. Sometimes this writing comes in the form of responding to questions, while other time it’s in the form of an essay. And sometimes the reading is watching, playing with, or otherwise interacting with a digital media. So I thought it might make sense to compile a list of ‘things’ learners can do as the result of ‘consuming’ a digital media.

Some of these tasks will look familiar, especially to English teachers. But it needn’t be only for them.The Common Core standards call for literacy efforts across content areas, and while much of the list below is indeed English Teacher oriented, it might help all educators see the fundamental ways media are changing.

Also, I know that medium is the singular form and media the plural, but to me the connotation of the word medium hints at the form (e.g., film, text, video), whereas the media seems more apt to refer to a specific example of a media form ( Schindler’s List, The Odyssey, Charlie Bit Me ). Hopefully this grammatical “error” isn’t too confusing.

You also might notice that many of them apply to both traditional and digital media. That is by design.

I’ll be updating this list, revising it to add better examples, alter clunky phrasing, and so on. So, below are 50 ways teachers across content areas–and homeschooled learners too–can promote digital media literacy . I may even categorize them roughly by Bloom’s Taxonomy. Overall, these are specific, practical, and rigorous tasks that will place a cognitive demand on the student, and can be used as a go-to list for teachers to bridge formal academic study with the new demands of digital media.

50 Activities To Promote Digital Media Literacy In Students

Infer the author’s purpose.
Distinguish between primary and secondary audiences.
Summarize the media by identifying its 3-5 most important ideas or events.
Identify and diagram the literary elements ( e.g., setting, characters, conflict, etc .)
Identify and analyze characters as major or minor; flat or round; static or dynamic; symbolic or non; protagonist, antagonist, or neither.
Analyze the relationship between character and plot development.
Identify obvious and non-obvious literary devices.
Infer what an author’s position on issue X might be after consuming an otherwise unrelated media ( Infer what Emily Dickinson’s position on social media might be given only a reading of her poetry—or the themes of a single poem ).
Revise and repackage a given media so that it is optimized for another platform (e.g., an essay to a YouTube video to a blog post to a Jux.com image to an infographic, etc .)
Debate the author’s choice in publishing platform.
Analyze the structure of the media, and determine its impact on its purpose.
Evaluate the medium for relevant ideas that were left unsaid.
Revise the media for a new audience.
Create a graphical representation of the relationship between the text and subtext of the media, and include evidence from the text to support any response.
Anticipate the cause-effect relationship between various self-selected media elements by altering them (e.g., revising the diction would impact the audience this way, revising the structure would impact the available publishing platforms this way, etc.)
Evaluate the impact of the publishing platform ( e.g., blog, YouTube, etc. ) on the purpose and tone.
Experiment with new chronological styles of narrative or argument sequence, and analyze the effect of each.
Recreate the media from another perspective (another character, a different narrator, etc.)
Design a “modal antithesis,” where some or all of a medium’s given modalities are revised to their opposites ( e.g., identify the basic structure and tone of “Southern Man” by Neil Young, and revise it to create their respective opposites ).
Estimate the stage of the writing process that was most crucial to the media’s success.
Design or outline an app to supplement a given media’s purpose.
Based on some important and self-selected element of this text, what does it make sense to consume next?
Critique or defend the sequence of ideas (idea organization).
Judge where supporting details are inadequate to support the thesis or theme.
Identify the ways making a selected media social impacts its use of the writing process.
Interpret the themes, tone, or other media component through a given critical position (e.g., Predict what John Locke would’ve said about the possibility of mobile learning given his stance on human consciousness ).
Experiment with various syntactical styles, and analyze the effect of any changes in a basic diagram.
Analyze the ratio of pathos, ethos, and logos in the media.
Evaluate only the credibility of a piece, and identify three ways it might be improved.
Alter the ratio of pathos/ethos/logos in the media, and analyze the impact of any changes.
Analyze the relationship between the sound, color, text features, and text.
Critique or defend the author’s choice in diction.
Prioritize the implicit and explicit ideas for their immediate relevance for a given context.
Analyze the media to extract the theme.
Criticize or defend a given media’s form ( e.g., this book would’ve been better as an app for this reason )
Criticize or defend the media’s balance of substance and whimsy.
Separate the information the media offers that’s new and what’s been heard before.
Concept-map the thesis and primary and secondary supporting details.
Propose sources that would improve over stated sources cited ( e.g., these three sources would’ve improved the overall credibility of the media ).
Identify the three modalities most critical to the media’s purpose.
Question the media’s brevity, intensity, or duration.
Analyze the tone, and identify the primary contributors to that tone.
Identify the most visual, most useful, and most natural methods of sharing a given media, and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Determine the most elegant, most useful, and most natural methods of curating a given media, and analyze the impact of each.
Discuss the relationship between the media’s style, the author’s style, and the apparent audience.
Describe the relationship between the tone and mood.
Analyze the relationship and/or tension between implicit and explicit themes.
Image the most logical follow-up media creation based on a self-selected and stated purpose or goal. (e.g., based on the author’s goal of increasing awareness of pancreatic cancer, a natural follow up to this blog post would be…)
Design an innovative diagram that analyzes the media in concept map form.
Collect and categorize convergent elements of divergent media ( e.g., a tweet, poem, video game, and folk song with similar tone but clearly divergent structures ).

Image attribution flickr user flickeringbrad; 50 Challenging Activities To Promote Digital Media Literacy In Students

Founder & Director of TeachThought

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

16.1 New Media Technologies

Learning objectives.

Trace the evolution of new media.
Discuss how new media are more personal and social than old media.

So what makes “new media” new media? When we consider “old media,” which consist of mainly print, radio, and television/movies, we see that their presence in our lives and our societies was limited to a few places. For example, television and radio have long been key technology features in the home. Movies were primarily enjoyed in theaters until VCRs and DVD players brought them into our homes. The closest thing to a portable mass medium was reading a book or paper on a commute to and from work. New media, however, are more personal and more social than old media, which creates a paradox we will explore later in this chapter, as we discuss how new media simultaneously separate and connect us. In this section, we will trace the evolution of new media and discuss how personal media and social media fit under the umbrella of new media.

The Evolution of New Media

New media, as we are discussing them here, couldn’t exist without the move from analogue to digital technology, as all the types of new media we will discuss are digitally based (Siapera, 2012). Digital media are composed of and/or are designed to read numerical codes (hence the root word digit ). The most commonly used system of numbers is binary code , which converts information into a series of 0s and 1s. This shared code system means that any machine that can decode (read) binary code can make sense of, store, and replay the information. Analogue media are created by encoding information onto a physical object that must then be paired with another device capable of reading that specific code. So what most distinguishes analogue media from digital media are their physicality and their need to be matched with a specific decoding device. In terms of physicality, analogue media are a combination of mechanical and physical parts, while digital media can be completely electronic and have no physicality; think of an MP3 music file, for example. To understand the second distinction between analogue and digital media, we can look at predigital music and how various types of analogue music had to be paired with a specific decoding device. To make recordings using old media technology, grooves were carved into vinyl to make records or changes were made in the electromagnetic signature of ribbon or tape to make cassette tapes. So each of these physical objects must be paired with a specific device, such as a record player or a cassette deck, to be able to decode and listen to the music. New media changed how we collect and listen to music. Many people who came of age in the digital revolution are now so used to having digital music that the notion of a physical music collection is completely foreign to them. Now music files are stored electronically and can be played on many different platforms, including iPods, computers, and smartphones.

Analogue media like videocassette recorders (VCRs) are only compatible with specific media objects that have been physically encoded with information.

Brad Montgomery – vcr – CC BY 2.0.

In news coverage and academic scholarship, you will see several different terms used when discussing new media. Other terms used include digital media , online media , social media , and personal media . For the sake of our discussion, we will subsume all these under the term new media . The term new media itself has been critiqued by some for setting up a false dichotomy between new and old. The technology that made new media possible has been in development for many years. The Internet has existed in some capacity for more than forty years, and the World Wide Web, which made the Internet accessible to the masses, just celebrated its twenty-first birthday in August of 2012.

So in addition to the word new helping us realize some key technological changes from older forms of media, we should also think of new as present and future oriented, since media and technology are now changing faster than ever before. In short, what is new today may not be considered new in a week. Despite the rapid changes in technology, the multiplatform compatibility of much of new media paradoxically allows for some stability. Whereas new technology often made analogue media devices and products obsolete, the format of much of the new media objects stays the same even as newer and updated devices with which to access digital media become available. Key to new media is the notion of technological convergence. Most new media are already digital, and the ongoing digitalization of old media allows them to circulate freely and be read/accessed/played by any digital media platform without the need for conversion (Siapera, 2012). This multiplatform compatibility has never existed before, as each type of media had a corresponding platform. For example, you couldn’t play records in an eight-track cassette tape player or a VHS tape in a DVD player. Likewise, whereas machines that printed words on paper and the human eye were the encoding and decoding devices needed to engage with analogue forms of print media, you can read this textbook in print, on a computer, or on an e-reader, iPad, smartphone, or other handheld device. Another characteristic of new media is the blurring of lines between producers and consumers, as individual users now have a more personal relationship with their media.

Personal Media

Personal media is so named because users are more free to choose the media content to which they want to be exposed, to generate their own content, to comment on and link to other content, to share content with others, and, in general, to create personalized media environments. To better understand personal media, we must take a look at personal media devices and the messages and social connections they facilitate.

In terms of devices, the label personal media entered regular usage in the late 1970s when the personal computer was first being produced and plans were in the works to create even more personal (and portable) computing devices (Lüders, 2008). The 1980s saw an explosion of personal media devices such as the Walkman, the VCR, the camcorder, the cell phone, and the personal computer. At this time, though, personal media devices lacked the connectivity that later allowed personal media to become social media. Still, during this time, people created personalized media environments that allowed for more control over the media messages with which they engaged. For example, while portable radios had been around for years, the Walkman allowed people to listen to any cassette tape they owned instead of having to listen to whatever the radio station played. Beyond that, people began creating mix tapes by recording their favorite songs from the radio or by dubbing select songs from other cassette tapes. Although a little more labor intensive, these mix tapes were the precursor to the playlists of digital music that we create today. Additionally, VCRs allowed people to watch specific movies on their own schedule rather than having to watch movies shown on television or at the movie theater.

While mass media messages are the creation of institutions and professionals, many personal media messages are the creation of individuals or small groups whose skills range from amateur to professional (Lüders, 2008). Personal computers allowed amateurs and hobbyists to create new computer programs that they could circulate on discs or perhaps through early Internet connections. Camcorders allowed people to create a range of products from home videos to amateur or independent films. As was mentioned earlier, portable music recording and listening devices also allowed people to create their own mix tapes and gave amateur musicians an affordable and accessible way to make demo tapes. These amateur personal media creations weren’t as easily distributed as they are today, as the analogue technology still required that people send their messages on discs or tapes.

Personal media crossed the line to new and social media with the growing accessibility of the Internet and digital media. As media products like videos, music, and pictures turned digital, the analogue personal media devices that people once carried around were no longer necessary. New online platforms gave people the opportunity to create and make content that could be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection. For example, the singer who would have once sold demo tapes on cassettes out of his or her car might be now discovered after putting his or her music on MySpace.

Social Media

Media and mass media have long been discussed as a unifying force. The shared experience of national mourning after President Kennedy was assassinated and after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, was facilitated through media. Online media, in particular, is characterized by its connectivity. This type of connectivity is different from that of the mass media we discussed in Chapter 15 “Media, Technology, and Communication” . Whereas a large audience was connected to the same radio or television broadcast, newspaper story, book, or movie via a one-way communication channel sent from one place to many, online media connects mass media outlets to people and allows people to connect back to them. The basis for this connectivity is the Internet, which connects individual computers, smartphones, and other devices in an interactive web, and it is this web of connected personal media devices like computers and smartphones that facilitates and defines social media. Technology has allowed for mediated social interaction since the days of the telegraph, but these connections were not at the mass level they are today. So even if we think of the telegram as a precursor to a “tweet,” we can still see that the potential connection points and the audience size are much different. While a telegraph went to one person, Olympian Michael Phelps can send a tweet instantly to 1.2 million people, and Justin Bieber’s tweets reach 23 million people! Social media doesn’t just allow for connection; it allows us more control over the quality and degree of connection that we maintain with others (Siapera, 2012).

The potential for social media was realized under the conditions of what is called Web 2.0, which refers to a new way of using the connectivity of the Internet to bring people together for collaboration and creativity—to harness collective intelligence (O’Reilly, 2012). This entails using the web to collaborate on projects and problem solving rather than making and protecting one’s own material (Boler, 2008). Much of this was achieved through platforms and websites such as Napster, Flickr, YouTube, and Wikipedia that encouraged and enable user-generated content. It is important to note that user-generated content and collaboration have been a part of the World Wide Web for decades, but much of it was in the form of self-publishing information such as user reviews, online journal entries/diaries, and later blogs, which cross over between the “old” web and Web 2.0.

The most influential part of the new web is social networking sites (SNSs) , which allow users to build a public or semipublic profile, create a network of connections to other people, and view other people’s profiles and networks of connections (Boyd & Ellison, 2008). Although SNSs have existed for over a decade, earlier iterations such as Friendster and MySpace have given way to the giant that is Facebook. Facebook, which now has more than 955 million monthly active users is unquestionably the most popular SNS. [1] And the number of users is predicted to reach one billion by the end of 2012 (Hunter, 2012). More specific SNSs like LinkedIn focus on professional networking. In any case, the ability to self-publish information, likes/dislikes, status updates, profiles, and links allows people to craft their own life narrative and share it with other people. Likewise, users can follow the narratives of others in their network as they are constructed. The degree to which we engage with others’ narratives varies based on the closeness of the relationship and situational factors, but SNSs are used to sustain strong, moderate, and weak ties with others (Richardson & Hessey, 2009).

Social media enable interactivity between individuals that share a social network and also allow people to broadcast or “narrowcast” their activities and interests.

Sean MacEntee – social media – CC BY 2.0.

Let’s conceptualize social media in another way—through the idea of collaboration and sharing rather than just through interpersonal connection and interaction. The growth of open source publishing and creative commons licensing also presents a challenge to traditional media outlets and corporations and copyrights. Open source publishing first appeared most notably with software programs. The idea was that the users could improve on openly available computer programs and codes and then the new versions, sometimes called derivatives, would be made available again to the community. Crowdsourcing refers more to the idea stage of development where people from various perspectives and positions offer proposals or information to solve a problem or create something new (Brabham, 2008). This type of open access and free collaboration helps encourage participation and improve creativity through the synergy created by bringing together different perspectives and has been referred to as the biggest shift in innovation since the Industrial Revolution (Kaufman, 2008). In short, the combination of open source publishing and crowdsourcing allows a community of users to collectively improve on and create more innovative ideas, products, and projects. Unlike most media products that are tightly copyrighted and closely monitored by the companies that create them, open source publishing and crowdsourcing increase the democratizing potential of new media.

The advent of these new, collaborative, participative, and democratizing media has been both resisted and embraced by old media outlets. Increased participation and feedback means that traditional media outlets that were used to one-way communication and passive audiences now have to listen to and respond to feedback, some of which is critical and/or negative. User-generated content, both amateur and professional, can also compete directly with traditional mass media content that costs much more to produce. Social media is responsible for the whole phenomenon of viral videos, through which a video of a kitten doing a flip or a parody of a commercial can reach many more audience members than a network video blooper show or an actual commercial. Media outlets are again in a paradox. They want to encourage audience participation, but they also want to be able to control and predict the media consumption habits and reactions of audiences (Siapera, 2012).

“Getting Real”

The Open Source Philosophy in the Professional World

No matter what career you go into, you will interact with something that is “open source.” It will likely be some type of open source software, since that is the area in which open source product development is most commonly applied (Brabham, 2008). When something is open source, its essential elements are available to anyone who may want to use and/or improve on the product. So, for example, when software is open source, the code is available to anyone who may want to edit it as long as they continue the open philosophy of product development by then making their version, often called a derivative, available to anyone who may want to edit it. Within this philosophy, the synergy that is created when a group of people with different levels of knowledge, experience, and expertise work collaboratively leads to innovative ideas and products that are then shared with the commons rather than kept as proprietary. One example of this type of free, open source software that is used in many professional settings is Mozilla’s Firefox web browser, which I’m sure many of you use.

Another example of open source innovation that we may soon be interacting with frequently in our professional and personal lives is 3D printing. 3D printers are already being used to print custom prosthetics used in knee and hip replacement surgeries, replacement parts for electronic and mechanical devices, custom guitars and shoes, food, and even skin that can be used on humans for skin grafts. [2] Although the rapid advances in 3D printing have so far been limited to a small group of inventors, specialty scientists, doctors, and early adopters, 3D printers for professional and personal use are now commercially available. The community of people using these printers is committed to keeping the them open, which means that when a user designs a program to print a plastic test tube holder that can be put on a standard drill to create a centrifuge, he or she will make that design available for anyone to use and/or modify. This type of do-it-yourself production could have implications for all types of businesses, who could, for example, save money on design, production, and shipping by printing their own custom or specialty products.

Discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of the open source model of product development and innovation.
Based on your current career goals, how might open source products (like computer software and 3D printers) play a role in your day-to-day job duties?

Key Takeaways

New media consist mostly of digital media, which are composed of and/or designed to read numerical code (such as binary code).
New media are distinct from old media in that they are less linked to a specific media platform and are therefore more transferable from device to device. They are also less bound to a physical object, meaning that information can be stored electronically rather than needing to be encoded onto a physical object.
New media are also distinct from old media in that they are more personal and social. As the line between consumers and producers of media blur in new media, users gain more freedom to personalize their media experiences. Additionally, the interactive web of personal media devices also allows people to stay in touch with each other, collaborate, and share information in ways that increase the social nature of technology use.
Getting integrated: Identify some ways that you might use new media in each of the following contexts: academic, professional, personal, and civic.
How do you personalize the media that you use? How do digital media make it easier for you to personalize your media experiences than analogue media?
Aside from using social media to maintain interpersonal connections, how have you used social media to collaborate or share information?

Boler, M., “Introduction,” in Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times , ed. Megan Boler (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 39.

Boyd, D. M. and Nicole B. Ellison, “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship,” Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 13, no. 1 (2008): 211.

Brabham, D. C., “Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 14, no. 1 (2008): 76.

Hunter, C., “Number of Facebook Users Could Reach 1 Billion by 2012,” The Exponent Online , January 12, 2012, accessed November 8, 2012, http://www.purdueexponent.org/features/article_8815d757-8b7c-566f-8fbe-49528d4d8037 .html .

Kaufman, W., “Crowd Sourcing Turns Business on Its Head,” NPR , August 20, 2008, accessed November 8, 2012, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93495217 .

Lüders, M., “Conceptualizing Personal Media,” New Media and Society 10, no. 5 (2008): 684.

O’Reilly, T., “What Is Web 2.0?” O’Reilly: Spreading the Knowledge of Innovators , accessed November 3, 2012, http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html .

Richardson, K. and Sue Hessey, “Archiving the Self?: Facebook as Biography of Social and Relational Memory,” Journal of Information, Communication, and Ethics in Society 7, no. 1 (2009): 29.

Siapera, E., Understanding New Media (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2012), 3.

“Key Facts,” Facebook Newsroom, accessed November 8, 2012, http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22 . ↵
“Pushing Dimensions: Charting the 3D-Printing Landscape,” 3D-Printer Hub , accessed November 20, 2012, http://3dprinterhub.com/3d-printer-news . ↵

Communication in the Real World Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

About The Journalist’s Resource
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
Criminal Justice
Environment
Politics & Government
Race & Gender

Expert Commentary

Digital media and society: Covering social media, technology and a networked world

Semester-long course on digital media and its impact on society, politics, journalism, privacy, law and the economy.

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by The Journalist's Resource, The Journalist's Resource May 28, 2013

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/economics/digital-media-and-society-syllabus-covering-social-media-technology-and-a-networked-world/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

This course is organized around the broad question of what journalists should know about the way digital media are reshaping society. To answer this question, it provides a series of foundational readings on the effects of new media on a number of domains of social life, including culture, the economy, privacy, law, politics, social movements and journalism.

It is designed to provide journalists covering any of these domains with the knowledge to analyze the development of technology and its continuing impact. Many journalism courses emphasize the craft of new media — the tools and tactics for effective newsgathering, storytelling, engagement, presentation and dissemination — but here we step back and seek to illuminate its social-science dimensions.

Learning objectives This course introduces journalists to a diverse set of readings about digital media’s impact on social life, and provides a set of exercises designed to help journalists apply the conceptual frameworks and empirical findings discussed in the course to real-world events and contexts.

At the end of this course, students will:

Understand how research data, theory and academic frameworks can inform richer, deeper reporting on issues of technology and society.
Know the relevant literature in several domains of study relating to new media and society.
Have a detailed understanding of several research streams.
Understand how to read research journal articles and books.
Know how to find relevant academic literature on topics related to new media and society.
Have a set of skills for writing short, theoretically informed pieces that apply the research literature to real world events and concerns.

Design To acquaint students with the many domains of digital-media research, this course is broken into 13 sections: media, culture and society; the public sphere; legal contexts of new media and Internet governance; privacy; collective action; activism and social movements; United States institutional politics; journalism; information; youth culture; networked social structure; digital economics; and finally Big Data and the future of computation. There are also weekly writing assignments and a final class assignment.

Assignments

Readings This syllabus has a number of article-length texts relating to class topics; these are required readings. To keep minimize costs, we provide open-access links when possible, and nearly all the articles can be obtained through university libraries. For greater depth, there are recommended book-length works listed with each week’s units. One comprehensive, free ebook that can help guide course discussion and activities around these topics is Searchlights and Sunglasses: Field Notes from the Digital Age of Journalism, by Eric Newton of the Knight Foundation. Finally, at the back of this syllabus is a list of essential books as well as a larger list of foundational books and articles.

Weekly writing assignments Throughout the course you are responsible for writing a regular blog post related to each week’s theme. There are specific topics posted, but students can modify them pending approval of the instructor. Posts should provide theoretically informed analysis, interpretation, or original reporting/research about the issues discussed. Your task is to goes beyond descriptive daily journalism (what happened) to become more analytical (why and with what consequence). The strongest posts will connect with the readings in the class and academic literature, and have some topical angle that frames the post.

For example, if you decide to write about how conversations on social media took shape around the Boston Marathon bombings during the unit on journalism, you should search for and summarize the academic literature that addresses what we know analytically and empirically about social media and the interactions between professionals and non-professionals in the public sphere. Your work is expected to be part of the wider discussion taking place online and should link to and engage with writings on other blogs. You are free to write using your own voice (i.e., write in the style of an editorial columnist or news analyst), but you should maintain the rigor expected of professional journalistic analysis.

Final project Students will produce a short five- to eight-page ﬁnal paper and deliver a five- to ten-minute presentation on a topic related to digital media and society. The paper and presentation should be organized as a more in-depth literature review of scholarly work on your topic. For example, if you choose “Big Data and reporting,” your task is to summarize research on the topic, its politics and how it has been used, as well as the norms, practices and values of the press. The strongest papers and presentations will advance an original argument. In the example above, what have scholars not asked about the relationship between Big Data and journalism? Why should we value journalists making more routine use of data in their reporting and what are the institutional, training, or practice barriers to them doing so?

Weekly schedule and exercises (13-week course) The assumption of this syllabus is that the course will meet twice a week. It is also assumed that students will have completed at least one basic reporting class before taking this course.

Week 1: Media, culture and society

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

The effects of the Internet and digital media on society have been debated over the last 20 years. This week takes as its starting point new media defined broadly as networked computing and digital technologies, and considers the relationship between technology and society and the origins of the contemporary information age.

Class 1: New media, culture and society

Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Daedalus , 1980, Vol. 109, No. 1, 121-136.
Yochai Benkler, Helen Nissenbaum, “Commons-Based Peer Production and Virtue,” Journal of Political Philosophy , 2006.
Fred Turner, “Burning Man at Google: A Cultural Infrastructure for New Media Production,” New Media & Society , April 2009.
Supplemental reading: Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture , 2008.

Class 2: Origins and structures of the networked age

Keenan May, Peter Newcomb, “How the Web Was Won,” Vanity Fair , 2008.
Batya Friedman, Helen Nissenbaum. “Bias in Computer Systems,” ACM Transactions on Information Systems , 1996, Vol. 14, No. 3, 330-47.
“ What Is Web 2.0? ” Tim O’Reilly, 2005.
Supplemental reading: Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society , 2005.

Assignment: Write a substantial blog post about the origins and transformation of digital culture. Pick several contemporary topics/areas where the tensions between old and new are evident — where you can see friction between the logic of traditional pre-Web cultural conventions and that of the current digital realm.

Week 2: The public sphere

One of the most studied areas of the effects of digital media on society comes in the context of the public sphere, where debates about its nature and changing shape have been ongoing for almost 30 years. This week focuses on works that provide a set of theoretical and empirical arguments about the consequences of changing technologies on public life and democratic expression more broadly.

Class 1: Framing the debate about the public sphere

Diana Mutz, “Cross-cutting Social Networks: Testing Democratic Theory in Practice,” American Political Science Review , 2002.
Daniel Kreiss. “Acting in the Public Sphere: The 2008 Obama Campaign’s Strategic Use of New Media to Shape Narratives of the Presidential Race,” Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change , 2012.
Supplemental readings: Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks , 2006; Matthew Hindman, The Myth of Digital Democracy , 2008.

Class 2: Networked media, information and democratic discussion

Markus Prior, “Media and Political Polarization,” Annual Review of Political Science , 2013.
Eli Pariser, “The Filter Bubble, or How Personalization Is Changing the Web,” TED Talks, 2011 (video).
Jonathan Stray, “Are We Stuck in Filter Bubbles? Here are Five Potential Paths Out,” Nieman Journalism Lab, 2012.
Rebecca MacKinnon, “The Innocence of YouTube,” Foreign Policy , 2012.
Supplemental readings: Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble , 2012; Markus Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy , 2007; Rebecca McKinnon, The Consent of the Networked , 2013.

Assignment: Review two studies posted at Journalist’s Resource: “Ideological Segregation Online and Offline” and “Political Polarization on Twitter.” In a blog post, analyze discourse around a particular news topic, area or forum on the Web where you see the dynamics of online polarization playing out.

Week 3: Legal contexts of digital media and Internet governance

Digital media are shaped not only by organizing bodies, legal codes and government regulations, but also social norms. This week explores the different aspects of Internet governance and how they impact its shape and structure.

Class 1: Legal Codes, intellectual property and challenges to the system

James Boyle, “Why Intellectual Property?” The Public Domain , 2008, Chapter 1.
Lawrence Lessig, “In Defense of Piracy,” Wall Street Journal , 2008.
Gabriella Coleman, “Code Is Speech: Legal Tinkering, Expertise and Protest among Free and Open Source Software Developers,” Cultural Anthropology , 2009.
Alexandre Mateus, John Peha, “Quantifying Global Transfers of Copyrighted Content Using BitTorrent,” Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, 2011.
Supplemental readings: Gabriella Coleman, Coding Freedom , 2012; Lawrence Lessig, Code: Version 2.0 , 2006 ; Lawrence Lessig, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy , 2008.

Class 2: Internet Governance

James Grimmelman, “Regulation by Software,” Yale Law Journal , 2005.
Jonathan Zittrain, “The Internet Is Closing to Innovation,” Newsweek , 2008.
Michael Joseph Gross, “World War 3.0,” Vanity Fair, May 2012.
Laura DeNardis, “ Open Standards and Global Politics ,” International Journal of Communications Law and Policy , 2008-2009.
Jack Goldsmith, Timothy Wu, “Digital Borders: National Boundaries Have Survived in the Virtual World — and Allowed National Laws to Exert Control over the Internet,” Legal Affairs , 2006.
Supplemental readings: Laura DeNardis, Protocol Politics , 2009; Tarleton Gillespie, Wired Shut , 2009; Jack Goldsmith, Who Controls the Internet? 2008; Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet , 2009.

Assignment: Review a study on Journalist’s Resource, “Quantifying Global Transfers of Copyrighted Content Using BitTorrent.” Use this study to help inform a blog post analyzing the emerging problems around copyright and larger questions of regulating the Web.

Week 4: Privacy

Privacy is an important aspect of new media, and it offers a compelling case to explore the contours of the debate over the evolution of social practices, media use, technological capabilities, Internet infrastructures, and the politics of platforms.

Class 1: The law and privacy in a networked age

Woodrow Hartzog, Frederic Stutzman, “The Case for Online Obscurity,” California Law Review , 2013.
Daniel Solove, “The Rise of the Digital Dossier,” Chapter 2 in The Digital Person , 2004.
Laura Brandimarte, Alessandro Acquisti, George Loewenstein, “Misplaced Confidences: Privacy and the Control Paradox,” Social Psychological and Personality Science , 2012.
“The State of Internet Privacy 2013: Research roundup,” Journalist’s Resource, 2013.

Class 2: The social and technical contexts of privacy

Helen Nissenbaum, “ A Contextual Approach to Privacy Online ,” Daedalus , 2011, Vol. 140, No. 4, 32-48.
Christena Nippert-Eng, “Secrets and Secrecy,” Islands of Privacy , 2010, Chapter 1.
Selections from “What They Know,” series by the Wall Street Journal .
Mary Madden, Amanda Lenhart, Sandra Cortesi, Urs Gasser, Maeve Duggan, Aaron Smith, “Teens, Social Media and Privacy,” Pew Research Center, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 2013.
Supplemental reading: Helen Nissenbaum, Privacy in Context , 2012.

Assignment: Review a study posted on Journalist’s Resource, “Why Parents Help Their Children Lie to Facebook About Age: Unintended Consequences of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.” In a blog post, analyze the relevant policy background and, given the social science data presented, the shortcomings of the current law and the merits of proposed solutions.

Week 5: Collective action online

The loss of privacy online — or at the very least the de facto making public of more of our behaviors — has important consequences for how we take action collectively in the networked era. This week we will explore a series of readings on the new face of collective action and changes in the types of organizations that mobilize and coordinate individuals in pursuit of shared ends.

Class 1: Organization-less organizing and the rise of new intermediaries

Clay Shirky, “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” (video), Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 2008.
“Research chat: David Karpf, scholar of Internet organizing and activism,” Journalist’s Resource, 2012.
“Digital activism and organizing: Research review and reading list,” Journalist’s Resource, 2013.
Supplemental readings: Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations , 2009.

Class 2: Old organizations, new information environments

Bruce Bimber, Andrew Flanagin, Cynthia Stohl, “Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment,” Communication Theory , 2005.
David Karpf, “Online Political Mobilization from the Advocacy Group’s Perspective: Looking Beyond Clicktivism,” Policy & Internet , 2010.
Supplemental readings: Bruce Bimber, Information and American Democracy , 2003 ; Bruce Bimber, Andrew Flanagin, and Cynthia Stohl, Collective Action in Organizations , 2012.

Assignment: After reading “Online Political Mobilization from the Advocacy Group’s Perspective,” interview several digital media specialists at activist/advocacy groups and analyze those organizations’ online strategies. Your analysis should speak to larger themes about the transformation of organizing.

Week 6: Activism and social movements

The lowered cost of collective action, the new social formations this makes possible, and the implications for formal organizations have had tremendous consequences in the domain of social movements. This week looks at the new face of social movements across different institutional and national contexts.

Class 1: Networked media and social movements

Lance Bennett, Alexandra Segerberg, “The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics,” Information, Communication & Society, 2012.
Lance Bennett, “Communicating Global Activism: Strengths and Vulnerabilities of Networked Politics,” Information, Communication and Society , 2003.
Jeffry R. Halverson, Scott W. Ruston, Angela Trethewey, “Mediated Martyrs of the Arab Spring: New Media, Civil Religion, and Narrative in Tunisia and Egypt,” Journal of Communication , 2013.
Supplemental readings: Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope , 2012 ; Larry Diamond, Liberation Technology , 2012 ; Philip Howard, The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy , 2010 ; Philip Howard and Muzammil Hussain, Democracy’s Fourth Wave? 2013.

Class 2: Organizing activism

Jennifer Earl, Katrina Kimport, Greg Prieto, Carly Rush, Kimberly Reynoso, “Changing the World One Webpage at a Time: Conceptualizing and Explaining Internet Activism,” Mobilization: An International Quarterly , 2010.
Zeynep Tufekci, Christopher Wilson, “Social Media and the Decision to Participate in Political Protest: Observations From Tahrir Square,” Journal of Communication , 2012.
John Palfrey, Bruce Etling, Rob Farris, “Political Change in the Digital Age: The Fragility and Promise of Online Organizing,” Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 2010.
Leah Lievrouw, “Oppositional and Activist New Media: Remediation, Reconfiguration, Participation,” Proceedings of the Ninth Participatory Design Conference, 2006.
Supplemental reading: Jennifer Earl, Digitally Enabled Social Change , 2011; Leah Lievrouw, Alternative and Activist New Media , 2011.

Assignment: Broaden the previous week’s analysis of a few specific advocacy organizations and offer a look at activist media around an entire issue area — for example, human rights or climate change.

Week 7: U.S. institutional politics

From Howard Dean’s groundbreaking presidential run in 2004 to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, digital media is transforming political engagement in both expected and unexpected ways.

Class 1: Campaigns in the Digital Age

Daniel Kreiss, “Crowds and Collectives in Networked Electoral Politics,” Limn , 2012.
Henry Farrell, “The Consequences of the Internet for Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science , 2012.
Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, Henry E. Brady, “Weapon of the Strong? Participatory Inequality and the Internet,” Perspectives in Politics , 2010.
Lee Rainie, Aaron Smith, Kay Lehman Schlozman, Henry Brady, Sidney Verba, “Social Media and Political Engagement,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2012.
Sacha Issenberg, “Why Campaign Reporters are Behind the Curve,” New York Times, 2012.
Supplemental reading : Daniel Kreiss, Taking Our Country Back , 2012; Rachel Gibson, Paul Nixon, Stephan Ward (editors), Political Parties and the Internet , 2003.

Class 2: From campaigning to governance

Matthew A. Baum, Tim Groeling, “New Media and the Polarization of American Political Discourse,” Political Communication , 2008.
“Open Data Seminar” posts at Crooked Timber blog, 2012. Featuring: Tom Slee, Victoria Stodden, Steven Berlin Johnson, Matthew Yglesias, Clay Shirky, Aaron Swartz, Henry Farrell Beth Noveck, Tom Lee.
Supplemental readings: Gavin Newsom, Lisa Dickey, Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government , 2013 ; Beth Noveck, Wiki Government , 2010.

Assignment: Choose one of the studies highlighted on the Journalist’s Resource article, “Effects of the Internet on politics.” In a blog post, use the study as a framework for evaluating the dynamics around an issue currently in the news spotlight, or a particular political campaign or cause.

Week 8: Journalism

While campaign organizations and political offices have undergone significant changes over the past 20 years, they’ve persisted institutionally. Journalism, however, has undergone rapid and profound shifts. This week looks at some of the shifts in new media and journalism from a host of different cultural, organizational, social and economic perspectives.

Class 1: News and its problems

“The State of the News Media 2013,” Pew Research Center, Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2013.
Jay Rosen, “Why Political Coverage Is Broken,” Jay Rosen’s Press Think, 2011.
Robert McChesney, “Farewell to Journalism? Time for a Rethinking,” Journalism Practice , 2011.
Nicco Mele, “Big News,” The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath , 2013, Chapter 2.
Clayton M. Christensen, David Skok, James Allworth, “Breaking News,” Nieman Reports, Fall 2012.
Supplemental readings: C.W. Anderson, Rebuilding the News , 2013; Pablo Boczkowski, Digitizing the News , 2005and News at Work , 2010.

Class 2: The digital dynamics of the news media

Sarah Sobieraj, Jeffrey M. Berry, “From Incivility to Outrage: Political Discourse in Blogs, Talk Radio and Cable News,” Political Communication , 2011.
Jodi Enda, “Campaign Coverage in the Time of Twitter,” American Journalism Review , 2011.
Alexis Gelber, “Digital Divas: Women, Politics and the Social Network,” Shorenstein Center, Harvard Kennedy School, spring 2011.
Supplemental readings: Andrew Chadwick, The Hybrid Media System , 2013 ; David Tewksbury, Jason Rittenberg, News on the Internet , 2012; Shanto Iyengar, Jennifer A, McGrady, Media Politics: A Citizen’s Guide , 2011.

Assignment: Review the findings of the study “That’s Not the Way It Is: How User-Generated Comments on the News Affect Perceived Media Bias,” posted at Journalist’s Resource. Write a blog post about the tension between promoting audience engagement and participation and some of the traditional practices and goals of institutional journalism.

Week 9: The politics of information

The politics of information is broader than journalism and extends to governmental information and the platforms for producing, consuming and disseminating information. This week we consider the politics of information historically, and focus on the case of Wikileaks.

Class 1: A history of information

James Gleick, “The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood,” New York Times , 2011, excerpt.
Michael Schudson, “Political Observatories, Databases and News in the Emerging Ecology of Public Information,” Daedalus , 2011.
Supplemental readings: James Beniger, The Control Revolution , 1989; James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood , 2012.

Class 2: A case study of WikiLeaks

Yochai Benkler, “A Free Irresponsible Press: WikiLeaks and the Battle Over the Soul of the Fourth Estate,” Forthcoming, Harvard Civil Liberties-Civil Rights Law Review .
Micah Sifry, “Wikileaks, Assange and Why There’s No Turning Back,” Huffington Post, 2011.
Clay Shirky, Richard S. Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press , Harvard Shorenstein Center, 2011.
Supplemental reading: Charlie Beckett and James Ball, WikiLeaks: News in the Networked Era , 2012.

Assignment: Choose a current controversy that involves the leaking of information to the public through digital means. In a blog post, analyze the issue and link it to the broader discussion about how our “information society” has evolved and the challenges we are likely to face in the future.

Week 10: Digital youth culture

Nowhere is the debate about the effects of new media on society richer than around consideration of the youth who are shaping social movements, civic and political participation and how information and cultural products are produced and consumed. This week explores demographic shifts and changes in media practice in greater detail.

Class 1: Networked social life

danah boyd, “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life,” Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 2008.
Lynn Clark, “Digital Media and the Generation Gap,” Information, Communication & Society , 2009.
Matt Richtel, “Wasting Time Is New Divide in Digital Era,” The New York Times , 2012.
Mary Madden, Amanda Lenhart, Maeve Duggan, Sandra Cortesi, Urs Gasser, “Teens and Technology 2013,” Pew Research Center, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 2013.
Supplemental readings: Mizuko Ito, Heather A. Horst, Matteo Bittanti, danah boyd, Living and Learning with New Media, 2009; Mary L. Gray, Out in the Country , 2009; Lynn Clark, The Parent App , 2012.

Class 2: Digital natives

Urs Gasser, Sandra Cortesi, Momin Malik, Ashley Lee, “Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality,” Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 2012.
Joseph Kahne, Jessica Timpany Feezell, Namjin Lee, “Digital Media Literacy Education and Online Civic and Political Participation” MacArthur Foundation Youth and Participatory Politics project, 2010.
Matt Richtel, “Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction,” New York Times , 2010.
Joel Stein, “Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation,” Time , 2013.
Supplemental readings: John Palfrey, Urs Gasser, Born Digital , 2010; Nancy Baym, Personal Connections in the Digital Age , 2010; Mizuko Ito, Heather Horst, Judd Antin, Megan Finn, Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out , 2013.

Assignment: Interview a dozen young people about their digital lives. Choose a theme for your questions such as bullying, distractedness, digital divides, information seeking or credibility. In a blog post, review your findings and put them into conversation with the wider research literature.

Week 11: Networked sociality and the research world

The digital generation is driving many changes in society, but a number of scholars see a much broader process of social and cultural change. This week’s readings explore more general shifts in social media and social life. We also examine related findings of social scientists.

Class 1: Structures of Social Life

Sherry Turkle, “The Flight from Conversation,” New York Times, 2012.
Stephen Marche, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” The Atlantic , 2012.
Ronald W. Berkowsky, “When You Just Cannot Get Away,” Information, Communication & Society , 2013.
Supplemental readings: Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman, Networked: The New Social Operating System , 2012; Sherry Turkle, Alone Together , 2012; Mizuko Ito, Misa Matsuda and Daisuke Okabe, Personal, Portable, and Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life , 2005.

Class 2: Facebook, Twitter and Social media — research findings

Michal Kosinskia, David Stillwell, Thore Graepelb, “Private Traits and Attributes Are Predictable from Digital Records of Human Behavior,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) , 2013.
Amy Mitchell, Paul Hitlin, “Twitter Reaction to Events Often at Odds with Overall Public Opinion,” Pew Research Center, 2013.
John Wihbey, “Questioning the Network: The Year in Social Media Research, 2012,” Nieman Journalism Lab, 2012.
Itai Himelboim, Stephen McCreery, Marc Smith. “Birds of a Feather Tweet Together: Integrating Network and Content Analyses to Examine Cross-Ideology Exposure on Twitter,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication , 2013.
“Deen Freelon of American University: Research chat on digital scholarship,” Journalist’s Resource, 2013.

Assignment: After reading “Twitter Reaction to Events Often at Odds with Overall Public Opinion,” find a thread, topic or hashtag on Twitter in which there appears to be dominant opinions or trends. In a blog post, analyze those trends, look at broader public opinions on the issue, and analyze the differences between the two based on what research has found.

Week 12: Digital economics

A central set of questions relates to the political economies of digital media and the attendant practices individuals craft around them. We consider here the economic value(s) of the key infrastructure providers of networked technologies, the commercial models of emerging platforms from video games to search, and the impact that new media has had on other industries such as the financial sector.

Class 1: Framing the Debate

Yochai Benkler. “Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production,” Yale Law Journal , 2004.
Yochai Benkler, “Freedom in the Commons: Towards a Political Economy of Information,” Duke Law Journal , 2003.
Brian X. Chen, “One on One: Susan Crawford, Author of Captive Audience ,” New York Times’s “Bits” blog, 2013.
Supplemental readings: Susan Crawford, Captive Audience: Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age , 2013; Henry Jenkins. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide , 2008; Robert McChesney, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy , 2013.

Class 2: Economic models of platforms

Gina Neff, David Stark, “Permanently Beta: Responsive Organization in the Internet Era,” Society Online , 2004, Chapter 11.
Hector Postigo, “From Pong to Planet Quake: Post-Industrial Transitions from Leisure to Work,” Information, Communication & Society , 2003.
Joseph Turow, “Audience Construction and Culture Production: Marketing Surveillance in the Digital Age,” The Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science , 2005.
Supplemental readings: Edward Castronova, Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games , 2006; Siva Viadhyanathan, The Googleization of Everything (and Why We Should Worry) , 2011.

Assignment: Review the study “Mobile News: A Review and Model of Journalism in an Age of Mobile Media,” posted at Journalist’s Resource. In a blog post, evaluate the digital business strategy of a particular news organization. Touch on some of the broader theoretical questions about digital commerce.

Week 13: Big Data and the future of computation

This week concludes the course more speculatively with consideration of the emergence of Big Data and the future of computation more broadly. We will discuss the possibilities, and limits, of data, as well as its inherent political aspects.

Class 1: Big data and its politics

Kate Crawford, danah boyd, “Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a cultural, Technological and Scholarly Phenomenon,” Information, Communication & Society , 2012.
David Weinberger, “The Machine that Would Predict the Future,” Scientific American , 2011.
Chris Anderson, “The End of Theory: Will the Data Deluge Make the Scientific Method Obsolete?” Wired , June 2008.
Janna Anderson, Lee Rainie, “The Future of Big Data,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, July 2012.
“What Is Big Data? Research roundup,” Journalist’s Resource, 2013.
Supplemental readings: Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think , 2013; Evgeny Morozov, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism , 2013.

Class 2: Big Data in political contexts

Robert M. Bond, et al., “A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization,” Nature , 2012.
Stephen Ansolabehere, Eitan Hersh, “Validation: What Big Data Reveal About Survey Misreporting and the Real Electorate,” Political Analysis , 2012.
Brant Houston, “Big Data in Need of Analytic Rigor by Journalists,” Global Investigative Journalism Network, 2013.
Supplemental readings: Sasha Issenberg, The Victory Lab , 2012; Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don’t , 2012.

Assignment: Review “A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization” posted at Journalist’s Resource. In a blog post, analyze the study’s results and discuss how the intersection of social media and Big Data could shape the future of society. What are the potential problems? What are the benefits? What might the future look like?

Essential books The following are book-length works that speak to core issues touched on in this syllabus. Many are recent works that take the latest digital dynamics into account.

Eric Newton, Searchlights and Sunglasses: Field Notes from the Digital Age of Journalism . Knight Foundation, 2013.
C.W. Anderson, Rebuilding the News. Temple University Press, 2013.
Bruce Bimber, Andrew Flanagin, Cynthia Stohl, Collective Action in Organizations: Interaction and Engagement in an Era of Technological Change . Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Sacha Issenberg, The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns . Crown, 2012.
Dave Karpf, The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Daniel Kreiss, Taking Our Country Back: The Crafting of Networked Politics from Howard Dean to Barack Obama. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Rebecca MacKinnon. Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom. Basic Books, 2012.
Robert McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times . The New Press, 2000.
Nicco Mele. The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath . St. Martin’s Press , 2013.
Evgeny Morozov, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism . PublicAffairs, 2013.
John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives . Basic Books, 2008.
Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think. Penguin Books, 2012.
Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organization Without Organizations. Penguin Press, 2008.
Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other . Basic Books, 2012.
Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. Yale University Press, 2009.

Supplemental reading list

M. Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age . Polity, 2012.
Andrew Chadwick, The Hybrid Media System . Oxford University Press, 2013.
Lynn. S. Clark, The Parent App: Understanding Families in the Digital Age . Oxford University Press, 2012.
Susan P. Crawford, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age . Yale University Press, 2013.
Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think . John Murray, 2013.
Laura deNardis, Protocol Politics: The Globalization of Internet Governance. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Jennifer Earl, Katrina Kimport, Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activist in the Internet Age. MIT Press, 2011.
Lisa Gitelman, Raw Data Is an Oxymoron . MIT Press, 2013.
James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood . Fourth Estate, 2011.
Jack Goldsmith, Tim Wu, Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World. Oxford University Press, 2008.
Lawrence Lessig, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy . Penguin Press, 2008.
MacKinnon, Rebecca. 2012. Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom. New York: Basic Books.
Robert McChesney, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy . New Press.
Gavin Newsom, Lisa Dickey, Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government . Penguin Press, 2013.
Lee Rainie, Barry Wellman, Networked: The New Social Operating System . MIT Press, 2012.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (and Why We Should Worry) . University of California Press, 2012.
Stephen Ansolabehere, Eitan Hersh “Validation: What Big Data Reveal about Survey Misreporting and the Real Electorate.” Political Analysis, 2012, 20(4), 437-459.
Matthew A. Baum, Tim Groeling, “New Media and the Polarization of American Political Discourse,” Political Communication , 2008, 25(4), 345-365.
Youchai Benkler, “Freedom in the Commons: Towards a Political Economy of Information,” Duke Law Journal , 2003, 52(6), 1245-1276.
Yochai Benkler, “A Free Irresponsible Press: WikiLeaks and the Battle Over the Soul of the Fourth Estate.” Forthcoming, Harvard Civil Liberties-Civil Rights Law Review.
W. Lance Bennett, Alexandra Segerberg, “The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics.” Information, Communication & Society, . 2012, 15(5), 739-768.
W. Lance Bennett, “The Personalization of Politics: Political Identity, Social Media, and Changing Patterns of Participation.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , 2012, 644: 20-39.
R.M. Bond, C.J. Fariss, J.J. Jones, A.D. Kramer, C. Marlow, J.E. Settle, J.H. Fowler.
“A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization,” Nature , 2012, 489(7415), 295-298.
dana boyd, Kate Crawford, “Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a Cultural, Technological, and Scholarly Phenomenon.” Information, Communication & Society , 2012, 15(5), 662-679.
Henry Farrell, “The Consequences of the Internet for Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science , 2012 , Vol. 15: 35-52.
“Open Data Seminar” posts on the Crooked Timber blog.
James Grimmelman, “Regulation by Software,” Yale Law Journal , 2005, No. 114, 1719-58.
J.R. Halverson, S.W. Ruston, A. Trethewey, “Mediated Martyrs of the Arab Spring: New Media, Civil Religion and Narrative in Tunisia and Egypt,” Journal of Communication , 2013.
Woodrow Hartzog, Frederic Stutzman. “The Case for Online Obscurity,” California Law Review, 2013, 101 Calif. L. Rev 1.
Gina Neff, David Stark. “Permanently Beta: Responsive Organization in the Internet Era.” Society Online: The Internet in Context , 2004.
Hector Postigo, “From Pong to Planet Quake: Post-Industrial Transitions from Leisure to Work,” Information, Communication & Society , 2003, Vol. 6, 593-607.
Lee Rainie, Aaron Smith, Kay Lehman Schlozman, Henry Brady, Sidney Verba, “Social Media and Political Engagement,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2012.
K.L. Schlozman, S. Verba, H.E. Brady, “Weapon of the Strong? Participatory Inequality and the Internet,” Perspectives on Politics , 2010, 8(2), 487-509.
Michael Schudson, “Political Observatories, Databases, and News in the Emerging Ecology of Public Information,” Daedalus, Spring 2011.
S. Sobieraj, J.M. Berry, “From Incivility to Outrage: Political Discourse in Blogs, Talk Radio and Cable News,” Political Communication , 2011, 28 (1), 19-41.
Zeynep Tufekci, Christopher Wilson, “Social Media and the Decision to Participate in Political Protest: Observations From Tahrir Square,” Journal of Communication , 2012, 62(2), 363-379.
Joseph Turow, “Audience Construction and Culture Production: Marketing Surveillance in the Digital Age,” Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science , 2005, 597.1.
Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Daedalus 109, 1980, No. 1,, 121-36.

A special thanks to Daniel Kreiss , Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for help with the writing of this syllabus.

About The Author

The Journalist's Resource

Resources: Discussions and Assignments

Module 3 discussion: media and technology.

STEP 1: Social media has grown exponentially over the last 25 years. The impact of social media has both advantages and disadvantages. Hollywood has used movies to describe the impact of social media into our lives. Choose a movie of any genre (fiction, documentary, etc.) that emphasizes the role of social media.

STEP 2: Watch the movie you have chosen.

STEP 3: Write a discussion post between 250-500 words that:

Identifies the movie and the genre you chose, then summarizes the movie
Describes the impact of social media to the characters in the movie
Compares and contrasts the role of social media in the movie (advantages and disadvantages to the characters) and how this relates to the individual and society in general.

STEP 4: Return to the discussion to comment on at least TWO other posts.

Discussion: Media and Technology. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

⋮⋮⋮ ×

Using Media to Enhance Teaching and Learning

Developed by G. Dirk Mateer , Penn State University, with considerable help from Linda S. Ghent , Eastern Illinois University, Tod Porter, Youngstown State University and Ray Purdom, University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

What is Using Media to Enhance Teaching and Learning?

Media can be a component of active learning strategies such as group discussions or case studies. Media could be a a film clip, a song you hear on the radio, podcast of a lecture or newspaper article. Students can also create their own media. For example, student video projects can be a powerful learning experience.

Why Teach with Media to Enhance Teaching and Learning?

How to teach with media to enhance teaching and learning, examples of using media to enhance teaching and learning.

Available Topics
Top Documents
Recently Updated
Internal KB

Teaching Strategies Active Learning Communication Course Management Discussions Generative AI Group/Team Work Interactive Lectures Online Teaching Writing

Digital media assignments allow students to demonstrate their learning of course content by creating multimedia learning objects using formats such as video, audio, still images, and text. Assignments include the creation of short video documentaries, digital stories, audio and enhanced podcasts, digital essays, and other types of multimedia presentations. Students present their ideas for peer and/or instructor critique, research and integrate primary and secondary resources, reflect upon and communicate their perspective on what they’ve learned, and use the appropriate tools to structure their assignments.

Examples of digital media assignments

Videos on environmental issues and sustainability – thomas eggert.

Thomas Eggert is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Business and the Environmental Assistance Coordinator for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. He had his students teach middle school classes about environmental issues and sustainability, first without using digital media and then incorporating videos into the class. This assignment was valuable to his students both technically and substantively. Technically, students needed to develop the skills necessary to record and edit the video. Additionally, they needed to learn how to develop an entertaining and educational story. Substantively, students needed to understand their content well and learn how to communicate it effectively to reach their intended audience. His students enjoyed creating digital media assignments and thought it was an effective way to teach middle school students.

ONLINE MAGAZINE – KATHLEEN CULVER

Kathleen Culver is an Assistant Professor in Journalism and Mass Communication. Her class of 20 undergraduates spent a semester working in teams to create an online magazine called Curb (www.curbonline.com). The magazine featured various digital media sources, including audio, video, slideshows, and timelines. While her students mainly pursue careers in professional communication, she felt the skills and satisfaction they received from these types of assignments were invaluable. Working with digital media assignments helped students become adaptable and analytical. Having these skills can help lawyers as much as it can help journalists. Through her experience, Culver found that lessons in new tools helped foster students’ creativity when using traditional tools. These skills were transferable with other assignments, such as writing research papers, and traditional skills were transferable with digital media assignments.

Methods of good practice

The resulting methods of good practice can help plan and integrate digital media assignments into a course.

Assign students to work on projects in small groups to promote student-to-student interaction and to build collaboration skills.
Provide training and support resources to help students learn new multimedia tools and software. Ensure these resources are available to students at the time of greatest need during the development process.
Educate students about the resources and methods for acquiring digital assets and the ethical and legal issues related to using these materials in their projects.
Address a real problem to increase motivation and allow students to share their projects with an audience outside the course to obtain authentic feedback (rather than a strict classroom audience).

The following points should be considered before starting a digital media assignment.

Meet with a learning technology consultant early in the design process for the assignment.
Study different examples of digital media assignments to understand and recognize how others have presented information in a multimodal format.
Develop a digital media assignment before assigning one to students. This will help identify the knowledge and skills students will demonstrate through their digital media assignment.
Identify and recommend specific technologies students should use for their assignments.
When selecting technologies, build on technologies that are familiar to students.
Remember that students can overestimate their technical abilities. Help them assess their level of expertise with the technologies being used.
Identify campus digital media equipment checkout, support, and student training resources.
Develop and share the rubric to be used to evaluate their digital media assignment.
Help students understand the time required to complete a digital media assignment.
Implement check-in phases of a project to guide students through a thoughtful process (i.e., storyboarding, script writing, rough draft, critique and feedback, and final due date).
Provide students with small, low-risk activities before giving them an official digital media assignment to allow them to practice and develop communication and media literacy skills.
Provide in-class time for students to work on their digital media assignments.

Roadmap to success

The following framework helps consultants and instructors think broadly about the assignment objectives and address important pedagogical issues such as:

integrating research into the assignment;
scheduling time with subject librarians or technology trainers and
teaching critical legal issues such as copyright and sharing one’s work with the public.

Use the following checklist to keep projects and consultations on track.

Students seek primary and secondary sources.
Students collect and create appropriate digital assets for the assignment.
Students integrate information from the course.
Students and instructors have opportunities to work with library staff.
Students integrate coursework with challenging problems that extend beyond the classroom.
Students communicate their ideas, perspectives, and emotions in creative ways.
Students articulate what they are learning using media. Re:construct
Students and instructors develop a process for planning, producing, revising, and delivering a media assignment.
Students integrate various forms of media and apply various skills to demonstrate their learning. • Students build new knowledge and understanding of the course content.
The instructor creates criteria to assess the media assignment.
Students go through an iterative process to develop their assignments.
Students receive feedback from the instructor and/or other students in the course.
Students learn to critique constructively.
Students share their work for public viewing and reuse.
Students get a Creative Commons license for their work.
Students and instructors improve their understanding of copyright issues.

Grading digital media assignments

Digital media assignments can be challenging to assess, especially if students work in groups. The following is a list of suggestions for developing a grading rubric.

Identify key course learning objectives, outcomes, and skills developed through the digital media assignment.
If applicable, determine whether students will receive a group grade, an individual grade, or a combination of the two.
Solicit feedback from students on how the assignment should be graded.
Consider ways to assess projects on the following: clarity of ideas and details, overall organization, effective use of language, voice, and audience, and technical competence.
Identify logical phases for the development of the assignment (i.e., storyboarding, script writing, rough draft, critique and feedback, and final due date).
Provide and/or facilitate feedback sessions for projects at each assignment phase.
Evaluate the quality of the resulting media by reviewing items such as length, pacing, appropriate use of visual and/or aural transitions, clean edits, and video quality.
Consider using journals and team feedback for student reflection on the assignment to assess the collaborative creative process.
Grade the process used in creating the digital media assignment, as well as the product itself.

CTLM Instructional Resources KnowledgeBase Menu Home Course Design Course Refinement Inclusive Teaching Teaching Readiness Teaching Strategies Technology Integration CTLM Site

Keywords	media, student, create, assignment	Doc ID	121195
Owner	Timmo D.	Group	Instructional Resources
Created	2022-09-09 09:01:40	Updated	2024-08-23 15:46:26
Sites	Center for Teaching, Learning & Mentoring
Feedback	1 1

Department & Units
Majors & Minors
LSA Course Guide
LSA Gateway

Knowledge base

Administrative Applications
Classroom Support & Training
Computer & Desktop Support
Equipment Loans & Reservations
Lecture Recording
Media Center
Research Support & Tools
Emergency Remote Teaching
Website Services & Support
Support Hours
Walk-in Support
Access Controls
Student Resources
Support LSA
Course Guide

Search: {{$root.lsaSearchQuery.q}}, Page {{$root.page}}

Multimedia Assignments

News & Events
Teaching Tip of the Week
Search News

Innovate Newsletter

Multimedia assignments provide rich learning experiences for students in which students can combine different types of media such as text, images, audio, videos, maps, etc. to create a cohesive project. The format of multimedia assignments offers more flexibility and choices than a traditional research paper, which helps to meet the needs of diverse learners. Such an assignment provides multiple ways to engage students in the course activities and multiple avenues to demonstrate their learning.

Emerging new media tools hold great potential for improving the quality of learning and teaching in higher education [1] if they are implemented effectively. The use of multimedia tools in course assignments can motivate students with creative options, and enable higher levels of engagement with academic content. It allows students to express themselves in new ways and to perform at highest Bloom’s taxonomy cognitive levels. A multimedia assignment does not only improve students’ technological skills but also gives students the chance to master and demonstrate various learning outcomes, including creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking, inquiry and analysis, successful application and use of technology, communication, and presentation skills [2]. Educational research shows multimedia assignments are beneficial for student learning and for developing skills such as teamwork, time management, and conflict resolution [3]. Some multimedia assignment ideas include,

Podcast or Audio Essay

Video Essay (including 360 video projects and documentary films)

Geographic or Narrative Map Project

Individual or team Website or Blog

Animated or digitally published text

Take a look at this gallery of multimedia assignments used in LSA classes and supported by the LTC consultants!

Podcast Essay Project

In Professor Monica Dus’s course, Neuroepigenetics, students worked in pairs to create 15 to 20 minute podcasts about a topic in Neuroepigenetics , written for the public.

Audiovisual Essay

In Professor Matthew Solomon’s course, Art of Film, SAC 236, students made a video argument about one of the films screened for class, using any of the skills and rhetorical strategies they have learned in the course.

Story Maps Assignment

In Professor Shachar Pinsker’s course, Jews in the Modern World, students used Story Maps to create a visually rich story to present their own understanding of Jewish modernity.

Website and Blog Assignment

Students from Professor Lucy Hartley’s course, What is Empire?, are currently working in groups to create a website to exhibit their conclusions.

Crafting effective and engaging multimedia assignments to be incorporated into your course requires several considerations, including,

Define clear and measurable learning outcomes for the assignment.

Determine the type of media to use based on the learning outcomes of the assignment and the required time to accomplish it.

Determine the deliverables you will require from students.

Provide a structure for your assignment that requires revisions: an outline, pitch, or proposal, a first draft, and a final version, with feedback to guide each stage.

Determine the assessments and rubrics and share them ahead of time with students. Assessment should evaluate the learning process, not just the final product. Rubrics can help keep students on task and apprised of what’s expected from them.

Determine the type of training, scaffolding, and technical support needed.

Make sure that the workload for the assignment is comparable to more traditional projects.

Determine how to grade them, e.g. single group grade versus multiple weighted grades, or group versus individual scores.

We offer student work spaces and equipment loans to suit many types of assignment. If you would like to consult on how to design a multimedia assignment that best aligns with your course learning objectives and what hardware and software tools are needed, contact the Learning and Teaching Technology Consultants at [email protected] .

[1] Adams Backer, S., et al (2017). NMC Horizon Report: 2017 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.

[2] Lieuw, T. (2014). How to Assign and Grade a Multimedia Project . Teaching Commons. Stanford University.

[3] Reyna, J., Hanham, J., & Meier, P. (2017). A taxonomy of digital media types for Learner-Generated Digital Media assignments. E-Learning and Digital Media, 14(6), 309–322. https://doi.org/10.1177/2042753017752973

Release Date:	12/05/2019
Category:	;
Tags:	;

Office of the CIO

News & events, help & support, getting started with technology services.

TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

G155 Angell Hall, 435 South State St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109–1003 734.615.0100 [email protected]

Information For
Prospective Students
Current Students
Faculty and Staff
Alumni and Friends
More about LSA
How Do I Apply?
LSA Magazine
Academic Advising
Majors and Minors
Departments and Units
Global Studies
LSA Opportunity Hub
Social Media
Update Contact Info
Privacy Statement
Report Feedback

10 Digital Art Projects That Will Spark Student Creativity

Isn’t it amazing that even though our students have grown up with technology, there’s still so much to learn? Of course, creativity should always be at the forefront, but technology can play a powerful supporting role. Allowing your students to explore their artistic and technological sides at the same time can open a world of possibilities.

Check out these 10 digital art projects that will combine traditional artmaking and technology skills to bring out your students’ creativity!

1. snapchat geo filter.

It’s no secret students are enamored with social media, so why not use it as a teaching tool? If you’re looking for a project that focuses on design and typography, try creating Snapchat Geo Filters for your community.

Community filters cost nothing to create! You or your students can directly submit your designs to Snapchat for approval. You can find the specific requirements here. This project is also a great way to introduce Project-Based Learning concepts because your students’ filters will impact the community around them. Plus, when one of your students’ designs does get chosen, they will be so excited!

2. Personal Logo Designs

This is a great project to combine printmaking and digital design. Have your students create monoprinted backgrounds directly on copy paper. Students can then create a personal logo by using an editing program like Photoshop. After their designs are created, you can run the monoprints directly through the copy machine, and the logo will print onto the paper. For more details on this project, check out this lesson plan .

Are you looking for detailed information about how to get started with Photoshop in your art room? Be sure to check out the Discovering the Basics of Photoshop Learning Pack! You’ll gain the confidence to introduce basic tools and processes to get your students making art!

3. Temporary Tattoos

There’s something about temporary tattoos that excites every age group. Why not try letting students design their own? Using printable tattoo paper , create digital designs using an inkjet printer. This is a fun way to explore technology, and your students will get to wear their designs!

4. Mosaic Portraits

If you use Photoshop, you know there are countless features to the program. It’s always exciting to show your students a new technique. Creating digital mosaic portraits is a great way to put a new spin on the historical process. Follow along with this video to learn how.

5. Space Galaxies

If you’re looking for a project to explore several new techniques both digitally and traditionally, this is the project for you! Using a medium like watercolor, chalk or oil pastels, students can explore painting or drawing techniques to create galaxy-inspired backgrounds. If you’re looking for instructions, you can check out a step-by-step process for creating a watercolor galaxy in this Learning Pack .

When finished, artworks can be photographed and altered in any digital editing program. Students can even explore 3D editing features to create life-like planets and objects.

6. Makey Makey Sculptures

Computer Science skills are in high demand, and they can even be incorporated into the art room. The Makey Makey device is an easy way to teach your students coding skills while bringing artwork to life. Using this device is an excellent extension of a sculpture project. Students can record sound effects, music, and other information to create an interactive piece. To see a sculpture come to life with the Makey Makey check out this video .

7. Animated GIFs

Animating is an engaging process, and there’s no better way to introduce students then by creating GIFs! If you’re looking for a way to get started, check out the animation work by artist Jen Stark. This will inspire your students to create geometric, color changing animations. Use this step-by-step guide to get started.

8. Light Paintings

If you’ve never tried light painting with your students, you need to! Simply gather up anything that emits light. Glow sticks, laser pointers, phone lights, and Christmas lights work well as light sources. This technique can be done with DSLR cameras using long exposure settings. However, it can also be done on an iPad, smart phone or tablet. Download a long exposure app to create light trailing images. As a bonus, students can digitally edit their photos to create new images.

9. Photoshop Your Teacher

Having a sense of humor in the classroom makes the learning environment that much more fun. After my students have learned some basic Photoshop techniques , I give them the chance to show me what they know by altering a picture of me. This can be a fun process for your students because they have the opportunity create some silly images with your permission. Just remind your students it must stay school appropriate, but you will laugh at your students’ creativity and ideas.

10. Gradient Landscapes

If you’ve ever introduced your students to the gradient tool in Photoshop, you know they’ll start using it for everything. Try introducing the gradient tool by creating a landscape image made entirely of gradients. This is an excellent way for students to practice creating foreground, middle ground, and background while practicing the use of the marquee and lasso tools to select defined areas.

If you’ve been stuck on ways to introduce digital artmaking to your students, try one of these projects. Many of these projects go beyond the computer screen and allow students to think creatively and critically. As you introduce your students to the world of technology and art, you’ll start to see the amazing things they can discover.

What are your favorite digital art projects to teach?

How does technology influence your art room?

Magazine articles and podcasts are opinions of professional education contributors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Art of Education University (AOEU) or its academic offerings. Contributors use terms in the way they are most often talked about in the scope of their educational experiences.

Abby Schukei

Abby Schukei, a middle school art educator and AOEU’s Social Media Manager, is a former AOEU Writer. She focuses on creating meaningful experiences for her students through technology integration, innovation, and creativity.

Discover How to Teach Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use in the Art Room

Back to Basics: How to Teach the 4 Processes of Printmaking for Newbies

5 Remarkable Gel Plate Printing Techniques for You To Master This Summer

How to Use Neurographic Art to Encourage a Calm and Focused Mind

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Chapter 8. Media and Technology

Ron McGivern

Learning Objectives

8.1. Technology Today

Define technology and describe its evolution.
Understand technological inequality and issues related to unequal access to technology.
Describe the role of planned obsolescence in technological development.

8.2. Media and Technology in Society

Describe the evolution and current role of different media, like newspapers, television, and new media.
Understand the function of product advertising in media.
Demonstrate awareness of the social homogenization and social fragmentation that are occurring via modern society’s use of technology and media.

8.3. Global Implications

Explain the advantages and concerns of media globalization.
Understand the globalization of technology.

8.4. Theoretical Perspectives on Media and Technology

Understand and discuss how media and technology are analyzed through various sociological perspectives.

Introduction to Media and Technology

How many good friends do you have? How many people do you meet for coffee or a movie? How many would you call with news about an illness or invite to your wedding? Now, how many “friends” do you have on Facebook? Technology has changed how we interact with each other. It has turned “friend” into a verb and has made it possible to share mundane news (“My dog just threw up under the bed! Ugh!”) with hundreds or even thousands of people who might know you only slightly, if at all. Through the magic of Facebook, you might know about an old elementary school friend’s new job before her mother does. By thinking of everyone as fair game in networking for personal gain, we can now market ourselves professionally to the world with LinkedIn.

At the same time that technology is expanding the boundaries of our social circles, various media are also changing how we perceive and interact with each other. We do not only use Facebook to keep in touch with friends; we also use it to “like” certain TV shows, products, or celebrities. Even television is no longer a one-way medium but an interactive one. We are encouraged to tweet, text, or call in to vote for contestants in everything from singing competitions to matchmaking endeavours — bridging the gap between our entertainment and our own lives.

How does technology change our lives for the better? Or does it? When you tweet a social cause or cut and paste a status update about cancer awareness on Facebook, are you promoting social change? Does the immediate and constant flow of information mean we are more aware and engaged than any society before us? Or are TV reality shows and talent competitions today’s version of ancient Rome’s “bread and circuses” — distractions and entertainment to keep the lower classes indifferent to the inequities of our society? Do media and technology liberate us from gender stereotypes and provide us with a more cosmopolitan understanding of each other, or have they become another tool in promoting misogyny ? Is ethnic and gay and lesbian intolerance being promoted through a ceaseless barrage of minority stereotyping in movies, video games, and websites?

These are some of the questions that interest sociologists. How might we examine these issues from a sociological perspective? A structural functionalist would probably focus on what social purposes technology and media serve. For example, the web is both a form of technology and a form of media, and it links individuals and nations in a communication network that facilitates both small family discussions and global trade networks. A functionalist would also be interested in the manifest functions of media and technology, as well as their role in social dysfunction. Someone applying the critical perspective would probably focus on the systematic inequality created by differential access to media and technology. For example, how can Canadians be sure the news they hear is an objective account of reality, unsullied by moneyed political interests? Someone applying the interactionist perspective to technology and the media might seek to understand the difference between the real lives we lead and the reality depicted on “reality” television shows, such as the U.S., based but Canadian MTV production Jersey Shore, with up to 800,000 Canadian viewers (Vlessing, 2011). Throughout this chapter, we will use our sociological imagination to explore how media and technology impact society.

8.1. Technology Today

Different technologies over time. Long description available.

It is easy to look at the latest sleek tiny Apple product and think that technology is only recently a part of our world. But from the steam engine to the most cutting-edge robotic surgery tools, technology describes the application of science to address the problems of daily life. We might look back at the enormous and clunky computers of the 1970s that had about as much storage as an iPod Shuffle and roll our eyes in disbelief. But chances are 30 years from now our skinny laptops and MP3 players will look just as archaic.

What Is Technology?

While most people probably picture computers and cell phones when the subject of technology comes up, technology is not merely a product of the modern era. For example, fire and stone tools were important forms of technology developed during the Stone Age. Just as the availability of digital technology shapes how we live today, the creation of stone tools changed how premodern humans lived and how well they ate. From the first calculator, invented in 2400 BCE in Babylon in the form of an abacus, to the predecessor of the modern computer, created in 1882 by Charles Babbage, all of our technological innovations are advancements on previous iterations. And indeed, all aspects of our lives today are influenced by technology. In agriculture, the introduction of machines that can till, thresh, plant, and harvest greatly reduced the need for manual labour, which in turn meant there were fewer rural jobs, which led to the urbanization of society, as well as lowered birthrates because there was less need for large families to work the farms. In the criminal justice system, the ability to ascertain innocence through DNA testing has saved the lives of people on death row. The examples are endless: technology plays a role in absolutely every aspect of our lives.

Technological Inequality

A school wall topped with barbed wire fence.

As with any improvement to human society, not everyone has equal access. Technology, in particular, often creates changes that lead to ever greater inequalities. In short, the gap gets wider faster. This technological stratification has led to a new focus on ensuring better access for all.

There are two forms of technological stratification. The first is differential class-based access to technology in the form of the digital divide . This digital divide has led to the second form, a knowledge gap , which is, as it sounds, an ongoing and increasing gap in information for those who have less access to technology. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines the digital divide as “the gap between individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels with regard to both their opportunities to access information and communication technology (ICTs) and to their use of the Internet for a wide variety of activities.” (OECD, 2001, p.5) For example, students in well-funded schools receive more exposure to technology than students in poorly funded schools. Those students with more exposure gain more proficiency, making them far more marketable in an increasingly technology-based job market, leaving our society divided into those with technological knowledge and those without. Even as we improve access, we have failed to address an increasingly evident gap in e-readiness, the ability to sort through, interpret, and process knowledge (Sciadas, 2003).

Since the beginning of the millennium, social science researchers have tried to bring attention to the digital divide, the uneven access to technology along race, class, and geographic lines. The term became part of the common lexicon in 1996, when then U.S. Vice-President Al Gore used it in a speech. In part, the issue of the digital divide had to do with communities that received infrastructure upgrades that enabled high-speed internet access, upgrades that largely went to affluent urban and suburban areas, leaving out large swaths of the country.

At the end of the 20th century, technology access was also a big part of the school experience for those whose communities could afford it. Early in the millennium, poorer communities had little or no technology access, while well-off families had personal computers at home and wired classrooms in their schools. In Canada we see a clear relationship between youth computer access and use and socioeconomic status in the home. As one study points out, about a third of the youth whose parents have no formal or only elementary school education have no computer in their home compared to 13% of those whose parent has completed high school (Looker and Thiessen, 2003). In the 2000s, however, the prices for low-end computers dropped considerably, and it appeared the digital divide was ending. And while it is true that internet usage, even among those with low annual incomes, continues to grow, it would be overly simplistic to say that the digital divide has been completely resolved.

In fact, new data from the Pew Research Center (2011) suggest the emergence of a new divide. As technological devices gets smaller and more mobile, larger percentages of minority groups are using their phones to connect to the internet. In fact, about 50% of people in these minority groups connect to the web via such devices, whereas only one-third of whites do (Washington, 2011). And while it might seem that the internet is the internet, regardless of how you get there, there is a notable difference. Tasks like updating a résumé or filling out a job application are much harder on a cell phone than on a wired computer in the home. As a result, the digital divide might not mean access to computers or the internet, but rather access to the kind of online technology that allows for empowerment, not just entertainment (Washington, 2011).

Liff and Shepard (2004) found that although the gender digital divide has decreased in the sense of access to technology, it remained in the sense that women, who are accessing technology shaped primarily by male users, feel less confident in their internet skills and have less internet access at both work and home. Finally, Guillen and Suarez (2005) found that the global digital divide resulted from both the economic and sociopolitical characteristics of countries.

Planned Obsolescence: Technology That’s Built to Crash

Chances are your mobile phone company, as well as the makers of your DVD player and MP3 device, are all counting on their products to fail. Not too quickly, of course, or consumers would not stand for it — but frequently enough that you might find that when the built-in battery on your iPod dies, it costs far more to fix it than to replace it with a newer model. Or you find that the phone company emails you to tell you that you’re eligible for a free new phone because yours is a whopping two years old. Appliance repair people say that while they might be fixing some machines that are 20 years old, they generally are not fixing the ones that are seven years old; newer models are built to be thrown out. This is called planned obsolescence , and it is the business practice of planning for a product to be obsolete or unusable from the time it is created ( The Economist, 2009).

To some extent, this is a natural extension of new and emerging technologies. After all, who is going to cling to an enormous and slow desktop computer from 2000 when a few hundred dollars can buy one that is significantly faster and better? But the practice is not always so benign. The classic example of planned obsolescence is the nylon stocking. Women’s stockings — once an everyday staple of women’s lives — get “runs” or “ladders” after a few wearings. This requires the stockings to be discarded and new ones purchased. Not surprisingly, the garment industry did not invest heavily in finding a rip-proof fabric; it was in their best interest that their product be regularly replaced.

Those who use Microsoft Windows might feel that they, like the women who purchase endless pairs of stockings, are victims of planned obsolescence. Every time Windows releases a new operating system, there are typically not many changes that consumers feel they must have. However, the software programs are upwardly compatible only. This means that while the new versions can read older files, the old version cannot read the newer ones. Even the ancillary technologies based on operating systems are only compatible upward. In 2014, the Windows XP operating system, off the market for over five years, stopped being supported by Microsoft when in reality is has not been supported by newer printers, scanners, and software add-ons for many years.

Ultimately, whether you are getting rid of your old product because you are being offered a shiny new free one (like the latest smartphone model), or because it costs more to fix than to replace (like an iPod), or because not doing so leaves you out of the loop (like the Windows system), the result is the same. It might just make you nostalgic for your old Sony Walkman and VCR.

But obsolescence gets even more complex. Currently, there is a debate about the true cost of energy consumption for products. This cost would include what is called the embodied energy costs of a product. Embodied energy is the calculation of all the energy costs required for the resource extraction, manufacturing, transportation, marketing, and disposal of a product. One contested claim is that the energy cost of a single cell phone is about 25% of the cost of a new car. We love our personal technology but it comes with a cost. Think about the incredible social organization undertaken from the idea of manufacturing a cell phone through to its disposal after about two years of use (Kedrosky, 2011).

Piles of e-waste including computers and microwaves.

8.2. Media and Technology in Society

Technology and the media are interwoven, and neither can be separated from contemporary society in most developed and developing nations. Media is a term that refers to all print, digital, and electronic means of communication. From the time the printing press was created (and even before), technology has influenced how and where information is shared. Today, it is impossible to discuss media and the ways that societies communicate without addressing the fast-moving pace of technology. Twenty years ago, if you wanted to share news of your baby’s birth or a job promotion, you phoned or wrote letters. You might tell a handful of people, but probably you would not call up several hundred, including your old high school chemistry teacher, to let them know. Now, by tweeting or posting your big news, the circle of communication is wider than ever. Therefore, when we talk about how societies engage with technology we must take media into account, and vice versa.

Technology creates media. The comic book you bought your daughter at the drugstore is a form of media, as is the movie you rented for family night, the internet site you used to order dinner online, the billboard you passed on the way to get that dinner, and the newspaper you read while you were waiting to pick up your order. Without technology, media would not exist; but remember, technology is more than just the media we are exposed to.

Categorizing Technology

There is no one way of dividing technology into categories. Whereas once it might have been simple to classify innovations such as machine-based or drug-based or the like, the interconnected strands of technological development mean that advancement in one area might be replicated in dozens of others. For simplicity’s sake, we will look at how the U.S. Patent Office, which receives patent applications for nearly all major innovations worldwide, addresses patents. This regulatory body will patent three types of innovation. Utility patents are the first type. These are granted for the invention or discovery of any new and useful process, product, or machine, or for a significant improvement to existing technologies. The second type of patent is a design patent . Commonly conferred in architecture and industrial design, this means someone has invented a new and original design for a manufactured product. Plant patents , the final type, recognize the discovery of new plant types that can be asexually reproduced. While genetically modified food is the hot-button issue within this category, farmers have long been creating new hybrids and patenting them. A more modern example might be food giant Monsanto, which patents corn with built-in pesticide (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, 2011).

Such evolving patents have created new forms of social organization and disorganization. Efforts by Monsanto to protect its patents have led to serious concerns about who owns the food production system, and who can afford to participate globally in this new agrarian world. This issue was brought to a head in a landmark Canadian court case between Monsanto and Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser. Schmeiser found Monsanto’s genetically modified “Roundup Ready” canola growing on his farm. He saved the seed and grew his own crop, but Monsanto tried to charge him licensing fees because of their patent. Dubbed a true tale of David versus Goliath, both sides are claiming victory (Mercola, 2011; Monsanto, N.d.). What is important to note is that through the courts, Monsanto established its right to the ownership of its genetically modified seeds even after multiple plantings. Each generation of seeds harvested still belonged to Monsanto. For millions of farmers globally, such a new market model for seeds represents huge costs and dependence on a new and evolving corporate seed supply system.

Anderson and Tushman (1990) suggest an evolutionary model of technological change , in which a breakthrough in one form of technology leads to a number of variations. Once those are assessed, a prototype emerges, and then a period of slight adjustments to the technology, interrupted by a breakthrough. For example, floppy disks were improved and upgraded, then replaced by zip disks, which were in turn improved to the limits of the technology and were then replaced by flash drives. This is essentially a generational model for categorizing technology, in which first-generation technology is a relatively unsophisticated jumping-off point leading to an improved second generation, and so on.

Types of Media and Technology

Media and technology have evolved hand in hand, from early print to modern publications, from radio to television to film. New media emerge constantly, such as we see in the online world.

Print Newspaper

Early forms of print media, found in ancient Rome, were hand-copied onto boards and carried around to keep the citizenry informed. With the invention of the printing press, the way that people shared ideas changed, as information could be mass produced and stored. For the first time, there was a way to spread knowledge and information more efficiently; many credit this development as leading to the Renaissance and ultimately the Age of Enlightenment. This is not to say that newspapers of old were more trustworthy than the Weekly World News and National Enquirer are today. Sensationalism abounded, as did censorship that forbade any subjects that would incite the populace.

The invention of the telegraph, in the mid-1800s, changed print media almost as much as the printing press. Suddenly information could be transmitted in minutes. As the 19th century became the 20th, American publishers such as Hearst redefined the world of print media and wielded an enormous amount of power to socially construct national and world events. Of course, even as the Canadian media empires of Max Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook) and Roy Thomson or the U.S. empires of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were growing, print media also allowed for the dissemination of counter-cultural or revolutionary materials. Internationally, Vladimir Lenin’s Irksa ( The Spark ) newspaper was published in 1900 and played a role in Russia’s growing communist movement (World Association of Newspapers, 2004).

With the invention and widespread use of television in the mid-20th century, newspaper circulation steadily dropped off, and in the 21st century, circulation has dropped further as more people turn to internet news sites and other forms of new media to stay informed. This shift away from newspapers as a source of information has profound effects on societies. When the news is given to a large diverse conglomerate of people, it must (to appeal to them and keep them subscribing) maintain some level of broad-based reporting and balance. As newspapers decline, news sources become more fractured, so that the audience can choose specifically what it wants to hear and what it wants to avoid. But the real challenge to print newspapers is that revenue sources are declining much faster than circulation is dropping. With an anticipated decline in revenue of over 20% by 2017, the industry is in trouble (Ladurantaye, 2013). Unable to compete with digital media, large and small newspapers are closing their doors across the country. Something to think about is the concept of embodied energy mentioned earlier. The print newspapers are responsible for much of these costs internally. Digital media has downloaded much of these costs onto the consumer through personal technology purchases.

Television and Radio

Radio programming obviously preceded television, but both shaped people’s lives in much the same way. In both cases, information (and entertainment) could be enjoyed at home, with a kind of immediacy and community that newspapers could not offer. Prime Minister Mackenzie King broadcast his radio message out to Canada in 1927. He later used radio to promote economic cooperation in response to the growing socialist agitation against the abuses of capitalism both outside and within Canada (McGivern, 1990).

Radio was the first “live” mass medium. People heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as it was happening. Hockey Night in Canada was first broadcast live in 1932. Even though people were in their own homes, media allowed them to share these moments in real time. Unlike newspapers, radio is a survivor. As Canada’s globally renowned radio marketing guru Terry O’Reilly asserts, radio survives “because it is such a ‘personal’ medium. Radio is a voice in your ear. It is a highly personal activity.” He also points out that “radio is local. It broadcasts news and programming that is mostly local in nature. And through all the technological changes happening around radio, and in radio, be it AM moving to FM moving to satellite radio and internet radio, basic terrestrial radio survives into another day” (O’Reilly, 2014). This same kind of separate-but-communal approach occurred with other entertainment too. School-aged children and office workers still gather to discuss the previous night’s instalment of a serial television or radio show.

The influence of Canadian television has always reflected a struggle with the influence of U.S. television dominance, the language divide, and strong federal government intervention into the industry for political purposes. There were thousands of televisions in Canada receiving U.S. broadcasting a decade before the first two Canadian stations began broadcasting in 1952 (Wikipedia, N.d.). Public television, in contrast, offered an educational nonprofit alternative to the sensationalization of news spurred by the network competition for viewers and advertising dollars. Those sources — PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) in the United States, the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), and CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), which straddled the boundaries of public and private, garnered a worldwide reputation for quality programming and a global perspective. Al Jazeera, the Arabic independent news station, has joined this group as a similar media force that broadcasts to people worldwide.

The impact of television on North American society is hard to overstate. By the late 1990s, 98% of homes had at least one television set. All this television has a powerful socializing effect, with these forms of visual media providing reference groups while reinforcing social norms, values, and beliefs.

The film industry took off in the 1930s, when colour and sound were first integrated into feature films. Like television, early films were unifying for society: As people gathered in theatres to watch new releases, they would laugh, cry, and be scared together. Movies also act as time capsules or cultural touchstones for society. From tough-talking Clint Eastwood to the biopic of Facebook founder and Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg, movies illustrate society’s dreams, fears, and experiences. The film industry in Canada has struggled to maintain its identity while at the same time embracing the North American industry by actively competing for U.S. film production in Canada. Today, a significant number of the recognized trades occupations requiring apprenticeship and training are in the film industry. While many North Americans consider Hollywood the epicentre of moviemaking, India’s Bollywood actually produces more films per year, speaking to the cultural aspirations and norms of Indian society.

New media encompasses all interactive forms of information exchange. These include social networking sites, blogs, podcasts, wikis, and virtual worlds. The list grows almost daily. New media tends to level the playing field in terms of who is constructing it (i.e., creating, publishing, distributing, and accessing information) (Lievrouw and Livingstone, 2006), as well as offering alternative forums to groups unable to gain access to traditional political platforms, such as groups associated with the Arab Spring protests (van de Donk et al., 2004). However, there is no guarantee of the accuracy of the information offered. In fact, the immediacy of new media coupled with the lack of oversight means that we must be more careful than ever to ensure our news is coming from accurate sources.

New media is already redefining information sharing in ways unimaginable even a decade ago. New media giants like Google and Facebook have recently acquired key manufacturers in the aerial drones market creating an exponential ability to reach further in data collecting and dissemination. While the corporate line is benign enough, the implications are much more profound in this largely unregulated arena of aerial monitoring. With claims of furthering remote internet access, “industrial monitoring, scientific research, mapping, communications, and disaster assistance,” the reach is profound (Claburn, 2014). But when aligned with military and national surveillance interests these new technologies become largely exempt from regulations and civilian oversight.

Making Connections: Sociological Research

Please “friend” me: students and social networking.

The phenomenon known as Facebook was designed specifically for students. Whereas earlier generations wrote notes in each other’s printed yearbooks at the end of the academic year, modern technology and the internet ushered in dynamic new ways for people to interact socially. Instead of having to meet up on campus, students can call, text, and Skype from their dorm rooms. Instead of a study group gathering weekly in the library, online forums and chat rooms help learners connect. The availability and immediacy of computer technology has forever changed the ways students engage with each other.

Now, after several social networks have vied for primacy, a few have established their place in the market and some have attracted niche audience. While Facebook launched the social networking trend geared toward teens and young adults, now people of all ages are actively “friending” each other. LinkedIn distinguished itself by focusing on professional connections, serving as a virtual world for workplace networking. Newer offshoots like Foursquare help people connect based on the real-world places they frequent, while Twitter has cornered the market on brevity.

These newer modes of social interaction have also spawned questionable consequences, such as cyberbullying and what some call FAD, or Facebook addiction disorder. In an international study of smartphone users aged 18 to 30, 60% say they are “compulsive” about checking their smartphones and 42% admit to feeling “anxious” when disconnected; 75% check their smartphones in bed; more than 33% check them in the bathroom and 46% email and check social media while eating (Cisco, 2012). An International Data Corporation (IDC) study of 7,446 smartphone users aged 18 to 44 in the United States in 2012 found that:

Half of the U.S. population have smartphones and of those 70% use Facebook. Using Facebook is the third most common smartphone activity, behind email (78%) and web browsing (73%).
61% of smartphone users check Facebook every day.
62% of smartphone users check their device first thing on waking up in the morning and 79% check within 15 minutes. Among 18-to-24-year-olds the figures are 74% and 89%, respectively.
Smartphone users check Facebook approximately 14 times a day.
84% of the time using smartphones is spent on texting, emailing and using social media like Facebook, whereas only 16% of the time is spent on phone calls. People spend an average of 132 minutes a day on their smartphones including 33 minutes on Facebook.
People use Facebook throughout the day, even in places where they are not supposed to: 46% use Facebook while doing errands and shopping; 47% when they are eating out; 48% while working out; 46% in meetings or class; and 50% while at the movies.

The study noted that the dominant feeling the survey group reported was “a sense of feeling connected” (IDC, 2012). Yet, in the international study cited above, two-thirds of 18- to 30-year-old smartphone users said they spend more time with friends online than they do in person.

All of these social networks demonstrate emerging ways that people interact, whether positive or negative. Sociologists ask whether there might be long-term effects of replacing face-to-face interaction with social media. In an interview on the Conan O’Brian Show that ironically circulated widely through social media, the comedian Louis CK described the use of smartphones as “toxic.” They do not allow for children who use them to build skills of empathy because the children do not interact face to face, or see the effects their comments have on others. Moreover, he argues, they do not allow people to be alone with their feelings. “The thing is, you need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something. That’s what the phones are taking away” (NewsComAu, 2013). What do you think? How do social media like Facebook and communication technologies like smartphones change the way we communicate? How could this question be studied?

Violence in Media and Video Games: Does It Matter?

A glance through popular video game and movie titles geared toward children and teens shows the vast spectrum of violence that is displayed, condoned, and acted out. It may hearken back to Popeye and Bluto beating up on each other, or Wile E. Coyote trying to kill and devour the Road Runner, but the graphics and actions have moved far beyond Acme’s cartoon dynamite.

As a way to guide parents in their programming choices, the motion picture industry put a rating system in place in the 1960s. But new media — video games in particular — proved to be uncharted territory. In 1994, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) set a ratings system for games that addressed issues of violence, sexuality, drug use, and the like. California took it a step further by making it illegal to sell video games to underage buyers. The case led to a heated debate about personal freedoms and child protection, and in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the California law, stating it violated freedom of speech (ProCon, 2012).

With somewhat more muted responses to claims of violations of freedoms, the Canadian rating system through provincial regulation reflects the diversity of interests in connecting media to cultural interests. With the exception of Quebec, most provinces tend to follow the voluntary Canadian Home Video Ratings System established by the Motion Picture Industry-Canada. Quebec has developed internal legislation and policies for motion picture distribution.

Children’s play has often involved games of aggression — from soldiers at war, to cops and robbers, to water-balloon fights at birthday parties. Many articles report on the controversy surrounding the linkage between violent video games and violent behaviour. Are these charges true? Psychologists Anderson and Bushman (2001) reviewed 40-plus years of research on the subject and, in 2003, determined that there are causal linkages between violent video game use and aggression. They found that children who had just played a violent video game demonstrated an immediate increase in hostile or aggressive thoughts, an increase in aggressive emotions, and physiological arousal that increased the chances of acting out aggressive behaviour (Anderson, 2003).

Ultimately, repeated exposure to this kind of violence leads to increased expectations regarding violence as a solution, increased violent behavioural scripts, and making violent behaviour more cognitively accessible (Anderson, 2003). In short, people who play a lot of these games find it easier to imagine and access violent solutions than nonviolent ones, and are less socialized to see violence as a negative. While these facts do not mean there is no role for video games, it should give players pause. Clearly, when it comes to violence in gaming, it’s not “only a game.”

Product Advertising

Companies use advertising to sell to us, but the way they reach us is changing. Increasingly, synergistic advertising practices ensure you are receiving the same message from a variety of sources. For example, you may see billboards for Molson’s on your way to a stadium, sit down to watch a game preceded by a beer commercial on the big screen, and watch a halftime ad in which people are frequently shown holding up the trademark bottles. Chances are you can guess which brand of beer is for sale at the concession stand.

Advertising has changed, as technology and media have allowed consumers to bypass traditional advertising venues. From the invention of the remote control, which allows us to ignore television advertising without leaving our seats, to recording devices that let us watch television programs but skip the ads, conventional advertising is on the wane. And print media is no different. As mentioned earlier, advertising revenue in newspapers and on television have fallen significantly showing that companies need new ways of getting their message to consumers.

With Google alone earning over US$55 billion a year in revenue, the big players in new media are responding in innovative ways (Google Investor Relations, 2014). This interest from media makes sense when you consider that subscribers pay over $40 each for pay-per-click keywords such as “insurance,” “loans,” and “mortgages” (Wordstream, N.d.). Today, Google alone earns over 50% of the mobile device revenue generated worldwide (Google Investor Relations, 2014).

What is needed for successful new media marketing is research. In Canada, market research is valued at almost a billion dollars a year, in an industry employing over 1,800 professional research practitioners with a strong professional association. From market segmentation research to online focus groups, meta-data analysis to crowdsourcing, market research has embraced new media to create winning and profitable revenue streams for web-based corporations. (MRIA-ARIM, N.d.) As an aside, researchers trained in the social sciences, including sociology are well represented with successful careers in this industry (the author is a Certified Marketing Research Professional with the MRIA).

8.3. Global Implications

A tweet posted during the Arab uprising in Egypt. Long description available.

Technology, and increasingly media, has always driven globalization. Thomas Friedman (2005), in a landmark study, identified several ways in which technology “flattened” the globe and contributed to our global economy. The first edition of The World Is Flat , written in 2005, posits that core economic concepts were changed by personal computing and high-speed internet. Access to these two technological shifts has allowed core-nation corporations to recruit workers in call centres located in China or India. Using examples like a Midwestern American woman who runs a business from her home via the call centres of Bangalore, India, Friedman warns that this new world order will exist whether core-nation businesses are ready or not, and that in order to keep its key economic role in the world, North America will need to pay attention to how it prepares workers of the 21st century for this dynamic.

Of course not everyone agrees with Friedman’s theory. Many economists pointed out that, in reality, innovation, economic activity, and population still gather in geographically attractive areas, continuing to create economic peaks and valleys, which are by no means flattened out to mean equality for all. China’s hugely innovative and powerful cities of Shanghai and Beijing are worlds away from the rural squalour of the country’s poorest denizens.

It is worth noting that Friedman is an economist, not a sociologist. His work focuses on the economic gains and risks this new world order entails. In this section, we will look more closely at how media globalization and technological globalization play out in a sociological perspective. As the names suggest, media globalization is the worldwide integration of media through the cross-cultural exchange of ideas, while technological globalization refers to the cross-cultural development and exchange of technology.

Media Globalization

Lyons (2005) suggests that multinational corporations are the primary vehicle of media globalization. These corporations control global mass-media content and distribution (Compaine, 2005). It is true, when looking at who controls which media outlets, that there are fewer independent news sources as larger and larger conglomerates develop.

On the surface, there is endless opportunity to find diverse media outlets. But the numbers are misleading. Mass media control and ownership is highly concentrated in Canada. Bell, Telus, and Rogers control over 80% of the wireless and internet service provider market; 70% of the daily and community newspapers are owned by seven corporations; and 10 companies control over 80% of the private sector radio and television market (CMCRP, N.d.; Newspapers Canada, 2013). As was pointed out in a Parliamentary report in 2012, an example of increased vertical control is a company that “might own a broadcast distributor (Rogers Cable), conventional television stations, pay and specialty television channels, and even the content for its broadcasters (Rogers owns the Toronto Blue Jays, whose games are shown on conventional and pay and specialty television channels)” (Theckedath and Thomas, 2012).

While some social scientists predicted that the increase in media forms would break down geographical barriers and create a global village (McLuhan, 1964), current research suggests that the public sphere accessing the global village will tend to be rich, Caucasian, and English-speaking (Jan, 2009). As shown by the spring 2011 uprisings throughout the Arab world, technology really does offer a window into the news of the world. For example, here in the West we saw internet updates of Egyptian events in real time, with people tweeting, posting, and blogging on the ground in Tahrir Square.

Still, there is no question that the exchange of technology from core nations to peripheral and semi-peripheral ones leads to a number of complex issues. For instance, someone using a critical sociology approach might focus on how much political ideology and cultural colonialism occurs with technological growth. In theory at least, technological innovations are ideology-free; a fibre optic cable is the same in a Muslim country as a secular one, in a communist country or a capitalist one. But those who bring technology to less developed nations — whether they are nongovernment organizations, businesses, or governments — usually have an agenda. A functionalist, in contrast, might focus on how technology creates new ways to share information about successful crop-growing programs, or on the economic benefits of opening a new market for cell phone use. Interpretive sociologists might emphasize the way in which the global exchange of views creates the possibility of mutual understanding and consensus. In each case, there are cultural and societal assumptions and norms being delivered along with those high-speed connections.

Cultural and ideological biases are not the only risks of media globalization. In addition to the risk of cultural imperialism and the loss of local culture, other problems come with the benefits of a more interconnected globe. One risk is the potential censoring by national governments that let in only the information and media they feel serves their message, as can be seen in China. In addition, core nations such as Canada have seen the use of international media such as the internet circumvent local laws against socially deviant and dangerous behaviours such as gambling, child pornography, and the sex trade. Offshore or international websites allow citizens to seek out whatever illegal or illicit information they want, from 24-hour online gambling sites that do not require proof of age, to sites that sell child pornography. These examples illustrate the societal risks of unfettered information flow.

China and the Internet: An Uncomfortable Friendship

Today, the internet is used to access illegal gambling and pornography sites, as well as to research stocks, crowd-source what car to buy, or keep in touch with childhood friends. Can we allow one or more of those activities, while restricting the rest? And who decides what needs restricting? In a country with democratic principles and an underlying belief in free-market capitalism, the answer is decided in the court system. But globally, the questions — and the government’s responses — are very different.

China is in many ways the global poster child for the uncomfortable relationship between internet freedom and government control. A country with a tight rein on the dissemination of information, China has long worked to suppress what it calls “harmful information,” including dissent concerning government politics, dialogue about China’s role in Tibet, or criticism of the government’s handling of events.

With sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube blocked in China, the nation’s internet users — some 500 million strong in 2011 — turn to local media companies for their needs. Renren.com is China’s answer to Facebook. Perhaps more importantly from a social-change perspective, Sina Weibo is China’s version of Twitter. Microblogging, or weibo , acts like Twitter in that users can post short messages that can be read by their subscribers. And because these services move so quickly and with such wide scope, it is difficult for government overseers to keep up. This tool was used to criticize government response to a deadly rail crash and to protest a chemical plant. It was also credited with the government’s decision to report more accurately on the air pollution in Beijing, which occurred after a high-profile campaign by a well-known property developer (Pierson, 2012).

There is no question of China’s authoritarian government ruling over this new form of internet communication. The nation blocks the use of certain terms, such as “human rights,” and passes new laws that require people to register with their real names, making it more dangerous to criticize government actions. Indeed, 56-year-old microblogger Wang Lihong was sentenced to nine months in prison for “stirring up trouble,” as her government described her work helping people with government grievances (Bristow, 2011). But the government cannot shut down this flow of information completely. Foreign companies, seeking to engage with the increasingly important Chinese consumer market, have their own accounts: the NBA has more than 5 million followers, and probably the most famous foreigner in China, Canadian comedian and Order of Canada recipient Mark Rowswell boasts almost 3 million Weibo followers (2014). The government, too, uses Weibo to get its own message across. As the years progress, the rest of the world anxiously watches China’s approach to social media and the freedoms it offers — on Sina Weibo and beyond — by the rest of the world.

Technological Globalization

Technological globalization is impacted in large part by technological diffusion , the spread of technology across borders. In the last two decades, there has been rapid improvement in the spread of technology to peripheral and semi-peripheral nations, and a 2008 World Bank report discusses both the benefits and ongoing challenges of this diffusion. In general, the report found that technological progress and economic growth rates were linked, and that the rise in technological progress has helped improve the situations of many living in absolute poverty (World Bank, 2008). The report recognizes that rural and low-tech products such as corn can benefit from new technological innovations, and that, conversely, technologies like mobile banking can aid those whose rural existence consists of low-tech market vending. In addition, technological advances in areas like mobile phones can lead to competition, lowered prices, and concurrent improvements in related areas such as mobile banking and information sharing.

However, the same patterns of social inequality that create a digital divide in the West also create digital divides in peripheral and semi-peripheral nations. While the growth of technology use among countries has increased dramatically over the past several decades, the spread of technology within countries is significantly slower among peripheral and semi-peripheral nations. In these countries, far fewer people have the training and skills to take advantage of new technology, let alone access it. Technological access tends to be clustered around urban areas, leaving out vast swaths of peripheral-nation citizens. While the diffusion of information technologies has the potential to resolve many global social problems, it is often the population most in need that is most affected by the digital divide. For example, technology to purify water could save many lives, but the villages in peripheral nations most in need of water purification don’t have access to the technology, the funds to purchase it, or the technological comfort level to introduce it as a solution.

The Mighty Cell Phone: How Mobile Phones Are Impacting Sub-Saharan Africa

In many of Africa’s poorest countries there is a marked lack of infrastructure. Bad roads, limited electricity, minimal schools — the list goes on. Access to telephones has long been on that list. But while landline access has not changed appreciably during the past 10 years, there’s been a marked fivefold increase in mobile phone access; more than a third of people in sub-Saharan Africa have the ability to access a mobile phone (Katine, 2010). Even more can access a “village phone” — a shared phone program created by the Grameen Foundation. With access to mobile phone technology, a host of benefits are available that have the potential to change the dynamics in these poorest nations. Sometimes that change is as simple as being able to make a phone call to neighbouring market towns. By finding out which markets have vendors interested in their goods, fishers and farmers can ensure they travel to the market that will serve them best, avoiding a wasted trip. Others can use mobile phones and some of the emerging money-sending systems to securely send money from one place to a family member or business partner elsewhere (Katine, 2010).

These programs are often funded by businesses like Germany’s Vodafone or Britain’s Masbabi, which hope to gain market share in the region. Phone giant Nokia points out that worldwide there are 4 billion mobile phone users — that’s more than twice as many bank accounts that exist — meaning there is ripe opportunity to connect banking companies with people who need their services (ITU News, 2009). Not all access is corporate-based, however. Other programs are funded by business organizations that seek to help peripheral nations with tools for innovation and entrepreneurship.

But this wave of innovation and potential business comes with costs. There is, certainly, the risk of cultural imperialism, and the assumption that core nations (and core-nation multinationals) know what is best for those struggling in the world’s poorest communities. Whether well intentioned or not, the vision of a continent of Africans successfully chatting on their iPhone may not be ideal. As with all aspects of global inequity, technology in Africa requires more than just foreign investment. There must be a concerted effort to ensure the benefits of technology get to where they are needed most.

8.4. Theoretical Perspectives on Media and Technology

It is difficult to conceive of any one theory or theoretical perspective that can explain the variety of ways that people interact with technology and the media. Technology runs the gamut from the match you strike to light a candle all the way up to sophisticated nuclear power plants that might power the factory where that candle was made. Media could refer to the television you watch, the ads wrapping the bus you take to work or school, or the magazines you flip through in a waiting room, not to mention all the forms of new media, including Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube, and the like. Are media and technology critical to the forward march of humanity? Are they pernicious capitalist tools that lead to the exploitation of workers worldwide? Are they the magic bullet the world has been waiting for to level the playing field and raise the world’s poor out of extreme poverty? Each perspective generates understandings of technology and media that help us examine the way our lives are affected.

Structural Functionalism

Because functionalism focuses on how media and technology contribute to the smooth functioning of society, a good place to begin understanding this perspective is to write a list of functions you perceive media and technology to perform. Your list might include the ability to find information on the internet, television’s entertainment value, or how advertising and product placement contribute to social norms.

Commercial Function

As you might guess, with nearly every U.S. household possessing a television, and the 250 billion hours of television watched annually by Americans, companies that wish to connect with consumers find television an irresistible platform to promote their goods and services (Nielsen Wire, 2011). Television advertising is a highly functional way to meet a market demographic where it lives. Sponsors can use the sophisticated data gathered by network and cable television companies regarding their viewers and target their advertising accordingly.

It certainly doesn’t stop with television. Commercial advertising precedes movies in theatres and shows up on and inside of public transportation, as well as on the sides of buildings and roadways. Major corporations such as Coca-Cola bring their advertising into public schools, sponsoring sports fields or tournaments, as well as filling the halls and cafeterias of those schools with vending machines hawking their goods. With the rising concerns about childhood obesity and attendant diseases, the era of pop machines in schools may be numbered. But not to worry. Coca-Cola’s filtered tap water, Dasani, and its juice products will remain standards in many schools.

Entertainment Function

An obvious manifest function of media is its entertainment value. Most people, when asked why they watch television or go to the movies, would answer that they enjoy it. Within the 98% of households that have a TV, the amount of time spent watching is substantial, with the average adult Canadian viewing time of 30 hours a week (TVB, 2014). Clearly, enjoyment is paramount. On the technology side, as well, there is a clear entertainment factor to the use of new innovations. From online gaming to chatting with friends on Facebook, technology offers new and more exciting ways for people to entertain themselves.

Social Norm Functions

Even while the media is selling us goods and entertaining us, it also serves to socialize us, helping us pass along norms, values, and beliefs to the next generation. In fact, we are socialized and resocialized by media throughout our life course. All forms of media teach us what is good and desirable, how we should speak, how we should behave, and how we should react to events. Media also provide us with cultural touchstones during events of national significance. How many of your older relatives can recall watching the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger on television? How many of those reading this textbook followed the events of September 11 or Hurricane Katrina on the television or internet?

But debate exists over the extent and impact of media socialization. Krahe and colleagues (2011) demonstrated that violent media content has a desensitizing affect and is correlated with aggressive thoughts. Another group of scholars (Gentile, Mathieson, and Crick, 2011) found that among children, exposure to media violence led to an increase in both physical and relational aggression. Yet, a meta-analysis study covering four decades of research (Savage, 2003) could not establish a definitive link between viewing violence and committing criminal violence.

It is clear from watching people emulate the styles of dress and talk that appear in media that media has a socializing influence. What is not clear, despite nearly 50 years of empirical research, is how much socializing influence the media has when compared to other agents of socialization, which include any social institution that passes along norms, values, and beliefs (such as peers, family, religious institutions, and the like).

Life-Changing Functions

Like media, many forms of technology do indeed entertain us, provide a venue for commercialization, and socialize us. For example, some studies suggest the rising obesity rate is correlated with the decrease in physical activity caused by an increase in use of some forms of technology, a latent function of the prevalence of media in society (Kautiainen et al., 2005). Without a doubt, a manifest function of technology is to change our lives, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Think of how the digital age has improved the ways we communicate. Have you ever used Skype or another webcast to talk to a friend or family member far away? Or maybe you have organized a fund drive, raising thousands of dollars, all from your desk chair.

Of course, the downside to this ongoing information flow is the near impossibility of disconnecting from technology, leading to an expectation of constant convenient access to information and people. Such a fast-paced dynamic is not always to our benefit. Some sociologists assert that this level of media exposure leads to narcotizing dysfunction , a term that describes when people are too overwhelmed with media input to really care about the issue, so their involvement becomes defined by awareness instead of by action about the issue at hand (Lazerfeld and Merton, 1948).

Critical Sociology

In contrast to theories in the functional perspective, the critical perspective focuses on the creation and reproduction of inequality — social processes that tend to disrupt society rather than contribute to its smooth operation. When taking a critical perspective, one major focus is the differential access to media and technology embodied in the digital divide. Critical sociologists also look at who controls the media, and how media promotes the norms of upper-middle-class white demographics while minimizing the presence of the working class, especially people of colour.

Control of Media and Technology

Powerful individuals and social institutions have a great deal of influence over which forms of technology are released, when and where they are released, and what kind of media is available for our consumption, a form of gatekeeping. Shoemaker and Voss (2009) define gatekeeping as the sorting process by which thousands of possible messages are shaped into a mass media–appropriate form and reduced to a manageable amount. In other words, the people in charge of the media decide what the public is exposed to, which, as C. Wright Mills (1956) famously noted, is the heart of media’s power. Take a moment to think of the way that “new media” evolves and replaces traditional forms of hegemonic media. With a hegemonic media, culturally diverse society can be dominated by one race, gender, or class through the manipulation of the media imposing its worldview as a societal norm. New media renders the gatekeeper role less of a factor in information distribution. Popular sites such as YouTube and Facebook engage in a form of democratized self-policing. Users are encouraged to report inappropriate behaviour that moderators will then address.

In addition, some conflict theorists suggest that the way North American media is generated results in an unbalanced political arena. Those with the most money can buy the most media exposure, run smear campaigns against their competitors, and maximize their visual presence. The Conservative Party began running attack ads on Justin Trudeau moments after his acceptance speech on winning the leadership of the Liberal Party in 2013. It is difficult to avoid the Enbridge and Cenovus advertisements that promote their controversial Northern Gateway pipeline and tar sands projects. What do you think a critical perspective theorist would suggest about the potential for the non-rich to be heard in politics?

Technological Social Control and Digital Surveillance

Social scientists take the idea of the surveillance society so seriously that there is an entire journal devoted to its study, Surveillance and Society . The panoptic surveillance envisioned by Jeremy Bentham and later analyzed by Michel Foucault (1975) is increasingly realized in the form of technology used to monitor our every move. This surveillance was imagined as a form of complete visibility and constant monitoring in which the observation posts are centralized and the observed are never communicated with directly. Today, digital security cameras capture our movements, observers can track us through our cell phones, and police forces around the world use facial-recognition software.

Feminist Perspective

A tall, thin model posing at the end of a runway

Take a look at popular television shows, advertising campaigns, and online game sites. In most, women are portrayed in a particular set of parameters and tend to have a uniform look that society recognizes as attractive. Most are thin, white or light-skinned, beautiful, and young. Why does this matter? Feminist perspective theorists believe it is crucial in creating and reinforcing stereotypes. For example, Fox and Bailenson (2009) found that online female avatars (the characters you play in online games like World of Warcraft or Second Life) conforming to gender stereotypes enhances negative attitudes toward women, and Brasted (2010) found that media (advertising in particular) promotes gender stereotypes.

The gender gap in tech-related fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) is no secret. A 2011 U.S. Department of Commerce report suggested that gender stereotyping is one reason for this gap, acknowledging the bias toward men as keepers of technological knowledge (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2011). But gender stereotypes go far beyond the use of technology. Press coverage in the media reinforces stereotypes that subordinate women, giving airtime to looks over skills, and disparaging women who defy accepted norms.

Increasingly prominent in the discussion of new media and feminism is cyberfeminism , the application to, and promotion of, feminism online. Research on cyberfeminism runs the gamut from the liberating use of blogs by women living in Iraq during the second Gulf War (Pierce, 2011) to the analysis of postmodern discourse on the relationship between the body and technology (Kerr, 2014).

Symbolic Interactionism

Technology itself may act as a symbol for many. The kind of computer you own, the kind of car you drive, whether or not you can afford the latest Apple product — these serve as a social indicator of wealth and status. Neo-Luddites are people who see technology as symbolizing the coldness and alienation of modern life. But for technophiles , technology symbolizes the potential for a brighter future. For those adopting an ideological middle ground, technology might symbolize status (in the form of a massive flat-screen television) or failure (in owning a basic old mobile phone with no bells or whistles).

Social Construction of Reality

Meanwhile, media create and spread symbols that become the basis for our shared understanding of society. Theorists working in the interactionist perspective focus on this social construction of reality, an ongoing process in which people subjectively create and understand reality. Media constructs our reality in a number of ways. For some, the people they watch on a screen can become a primary group, meaning the small informal groups of people who are closest to them. For many others, media becomes a reference group: a group that influences an individual and to which an individual compares himself or herself, and by which we judge our successes and failures. We might do very well without an Android smartphone, until we see characters using it on our favourite television show or our classmates whipping one out between classes.

While media may indeed be the medium to spread the message of the rich white males, Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, and Sasson (1992) point out that some forms of media discourse allow the appearance of competing constructions of reality. For example, advertisers find new and creative ways to sell us products we do not need and probably would not want without their prompting, but some networking sites such as Freecycle offer a commercial-free way of requesting and trading items that would otherwise be discarded. Additionally, the web is full of blogs chronicling lives lived “off the grid,” or without participation in the commercial economy.

Social Networking and Social Construction

While Twitter and Facebook encourage us to check in and provide details of our day through online social networks, corporations can just as easily promote their products on these sites. Even supposedly crowd-sourced sites like Yelp (which aggregates local reviews) are not immune to corporate shenanigans. That is, we think we are reading objective observations when in reality we may be buying into one more form of advertising.

Notice that whenever you become a “fan,” you likely receive product updates and special deals that promote online and real-world consumerism. It is unlikely that millions of people want to be “friends” with Pampers. But if it means a weekly coupon, they will, in essence, rent out space on their Facebook page for Pampers to appear. Thus, we develop both new ways to spend money and brand loyalties that will last even after Facebook is considered outdated and obsolete. What cannot be forgotten with new technology is the dynamic tension between the liberating effects of these technologies in democratizing information access and flow, and the newly emerging corporate ownership and revenue models that necessitate control of the same technologies.

cyberfeminism: Application to and promotion of feminism online.

design patents: Patents that are granted when someone has invented a new and original design for a manufactured product.

digital divide: The uneven access to technology around race, class, and geographic lines.

e-readiness: The ability to sort through, interpret, and process digital knowledge.

embodied energy: The sum of energy required for a finished product including the resource extraction, transportation, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, and disposal.

evolutionary model of technological change: A breakthrough in one form of technology that leads to a number of variations, from which a prototype emerges, followed by a period of slight adjustments to the technology, interrupted by a breakthrough.

gatekeeping: The sorting process by which thousands of possible messages are shaped into a mass media–appropriate form and reduced to a manageable amount.

knowledge gap: The gap in information that builds as groups grow up without access to technology.

media: All print, digital, and electronic means of communication.

media globalization: The worldwide integration of media through the cross-cultural exchange of ideas.

misogyny: Personal, social, and cultural manifestations of the hatred of girls and women.

narcotizing dysfunction: When people are too overwhelmed with media input to really care about the issue, so their involvement becomes defined by awareness instead of by action about the issue at hand.

neo-Luddites: Those who see technology as a symbol of the coldness of modern life.

new media: All interactive forms of information exchange.

panoptic surveillance: A form of constant monitoring in which the observation posts are decentralized and the observed is never communicated with directly.

planned obsolescence: When a technology company plans for a product to be obsolete or unable to be repaired from the time it’s created.

plant patents: Patents that recognize the discovery of new plant types that can be asexually reproduced.

technological diffusion: The spread of technology across borders.

technological globalization: The cross-cultural development and exchange of technology.

technology: The application of science to solve problems in daily life.

technophiles: Those who see technology as symbolizing the potential for a brighter future.

utility patents: Patents that are granted for the invention or discovery of any new and useful process, product, or machine.

Section Summary

8.1. Technology Today Technology is the application of science to address the problems of daily life. The fast pace of technological advancement means the advancements are continuous, but that not everyone has equal access. The gap created by this unequal access has been termed the digital divide. The knowledge gap refers to an effect of the “digital divide”: the lack of knowledge or information that keeps those who were not exposed to technology from gaining marketable skills

8.2. Media and Technology in Society Media and technology have been interwoven from the earliest days of human communication. The printing press, the telegraph, and the internet are all examples of their intersection. Mass media has allowed for more shared social experiences, but new media now creates a seemingly endless amount of airtime for any and every voice that wants to be heard. Advertising has also changed with technology. New media allows consumers to bypass traditional advertising venues, causing companies to be more innovative and intrusive as they try to gain our attention.

8.3. Global Implications Technology drives globalization, but what that means can be hard to decipher. While some economists see technological advances leading to a more level playing field where anyone anywhere can be a global contender, the reality is that opportunity still clusters in geographically advantaged areas. Still, technological diffusion has led to the spread of more and more technology across borders into peripheral and semi-peripheral nations. However, true technological global equality is a long way off.

8.4. Theoretical Perspectives on Media and Technology There are myriad theories about how society, technology, and media will progress. Functionalism sees the contribution that technology and media provide to the stability of society, from facilitating leisure time to increasing productivity. Conflict theorists are more concerned with how technology reinforces inequalities among communities, both within and among countries. They also look at how media typically give voice to the most powerful, and how new media might offer tools to help those who are disenfranchised. Symbolic interactionists see the symbolic uses of technology as signs of everything from a sterile futuristic world to a successful professional life.

Section Quiz

1. Jerome is able to use the internet to select reliable sources for his research paper, but Charlie just copies large pieces of web pages and pastes them into his paper. Jerome has _____________ while Charlie does not.

A functional perspective
The knowledge gap
E-readiness
A digital divide

2. The ________ can be directly attributed to the digital divide, because differential ability to access the internet leads directly to a differential ability to use the knowledge found on the internet.

Digital divide
Knowledge gap
Feminist perspective

3. The fact that your cell phone is using outdated technology within a year or two of purchase is an example of ____________.

The conflict perspective
Conspicuous consumption
Planned obsolescence

4. The history of technology began _________.

In the early stages of human societies
With the invention of the computer
During the Renaissance
During the 19th century

8.2. Media and Technology in Society 5. When it comes to technology, media, and society, which of the following is true?

Media influences technology, but not society.
Technology created media, but society has nothing to do with these.
Technology, media, and society are bound and cannot be separated.
Society influences media but is not connected to technology.

6. If the U.S. Patent Office were to issue a patent for a new type of tomato that tastes like a jellybean, it would be issuing a _________ patent?

The U.S. Patent Office does not issue a patent for plants.

7. Which of the following is the primary component of the evolutionary model of technological change?

Technology should not be subject to patenting.
Technology and the media evolve together.
Technology can be traced back to the early stages of human society.
A breakthrough in one form of technology leads to a number of variations, and technological developments.

8. Which of the following is not a form of new media?

A cable television program
A cooking blog

9. Research regarding video game violence suggests that ______________________________.

Boys who play violent video games become more aggressive, but girls do not
Girls who play violent video games become more aggressive, but boys do not
Violent video games have no connection to aggressive behaviour
Violent video games lead to an increase in aggressive thought and behaviour

10. Comic books, Wikipedia, MTV, and a commercial for Coca-Cola are all examples of:

Symbolic interaction perspective
The digital divide

8.3. Global Implications 11. When Japanese scientists develop a new vaccine for swine flu and offer that technology to American pharmaceutical companies, __________ has taken place.

Media globalization
Technological diffusion

12. In the mid-90s, the U.S. government grew concerned that Microsoft was a _______________, exercising disproportionate control over the available choices and prices of computers.

Conglomerate
Functionalism
Technological globalization

13. The movie Babel featured an international cast and was filmed on location in various nations. When it screened in theatres worldwide, it introduced a number of ideas and philosophies about cross-cultural connections. This might be an example of _______________.

Conglomerating
Symbolic interaction

14. Which of the following is not a risk of media globalization?

The creation of cultural and ideological biases
The creation of local monopolies
The risk of cultural imperialism
The loss of local culture

15. The government of __________ blocks citizens’ access to popular new media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Afghanistan

8.4. Theoretical Perspectives on Media and Technology 16. A parent secretly monitoring the babysitter through the use of GPS, site blocker, and nanny cam is a good example of _______________.

The social construction of reality
Technophilia
A neo-Luddite
Panoptic surveillance

17. The use of Facebook to create an online persona by only posting images that match your ideal self exemplifies the_____________ that can occur in forms of new media.

Social construction of reality
Cyberfeminism
Market segmentation
Referencing

18. _________ tend to be more pro-technology, while _______ view technology as a symbol of the coldness of modern life.

Neo-Luddites; technophiles
Technophiles; neo-Luddites
Cyberfeminists; technophiles
Liberal feminists; conflict theorists

19. When it comes to media and technology, a functionalist would focus on ___________________________.

The symbols created and reproduced by the media
The association of technology and technological skill with men
The way that various forms of media socialize users
The digital divide between the technological haves and have-nots

20. When all media sources report a simplified version of the environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing, with no effort to convey the hard science and complicated statistical data behind the story, ___________ is probably occurring.

Gatekeeping

[Quiz answers at end of chapter]

Short Answer

Can you think of people in your own life who support or defy the premise that access to technology leads to greater opportunities? How have you noticed technology use and opportunity to be linked, or does your experience contradict this idea?
Should a government be responsible for providing all citizens with access to the internet? Or is gaining internet access an individual responsibility?
How has digital media changed social interactions? Do you believe it has deepened or weakened human connections? Defend your answer.
Conduct sociological research. Google yourself. How much information about you is available to the public? How many and what types of companies offer private information about you for a fee? Compile the data and statistics you find. Write a paragraph or two about the social issues and behaviours you notice.
Where and how do you get your news? Do you watch network television? Read the newspaper? Go online? How about your parents or grandparents? Do you think it matters where you seek out information? Why or why not?
Do you believe new media allows for the kind of unifying moments that television and radio programming used to? If so, give an example.
Where are you most likely to notice advertisements? What causes them to catch your attention?
Do you believe that technology has indeed flattened the world in terms of providing opportunity? Why or why not? Give examples to support your reason.
Where do you get your news? Is it owned by a large conglomerate (you can do a web search and find out!)? Does it matter to you who owns your local news outlets? Why or why not?
Who do you think is most likely to bring innovation and technology (like cell phone businesses) to sub-Saharan Africa: nonprofit organizations, governments, or businesses? Why?
Contrast a functionalist viewpoint of digital surveillance with a conflict perspective viewpoint.
In what ways has the internet affected how you view reality? Explain using a symbolic interactionist perspective.
Describe how a cyberfeminist might address the fact that powerful female politicians are often demonized in traditional media.
The issue of new media ownership is an issue of growing media concern. Select a theoretical perspective and describe how it would explain this.
Would you characterize yourself as a technophile or a neo-Luddite? Explain, using examples.

Further Research

8.1. Technology Today To learn more about the digital divide and why it matters, check out these websites: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Digital_Divide and http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Digital_Divide2.

8.2. Media and Technology in Society Check out this website to get a sense of the timeline of technology : http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Tech_History.

Visit this website to learn more about new media : http://openstaxcollege.org/l/new_media.

8.4. Theoretical Perspectives on Media and Technology To learn more about cyberfeminism, check out the interdisciplinary artist collective, subRosa : http://openstaxcollege.org/l/cyberfeminism

To explore the implications of panoptic surveillance, review some surveillance studies at the free, open source Surveillance and Society site: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Surveillance

8. Introduction to Media and Technology Vlessing, Etan. (2011). ‘Jersey Shore’ continues record MTV Canada run. The Hollywood Reporter , Retrieved April 04, 2014, from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jersey-shore-continues-record-mtv-225876.

8.1. Technology Today Guillen, M.F., and S.L. Suárez. (2005). Explaining the global digital divide: Economic, political and sociological drivers of cross-national internet use. Social Forces, 84:681–708.

Kedrosky, Paul. (2011, June 15). Cars vs cell phone embodied energy . Retrieved July 7, 2016, from http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2011/06/cars-vs-cell-phone-embodied-energy.html.

Liff, Sonia, and Adrian Shepard. (2004, July). An evolving gender digital divide? [PDF] Oxford Internet Institute, Internet Issue, Brief No. 2. Retrieved July 7, 2016 from http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/publications/IB2all.pdf.

Looker, Dianne and Thiessen, Victor. (2003). The digital divide in Canadian schools: factors affecting student access to and use of information technology. [PDF] Statistics Canada, Research Paper , Catalogue no. 81-597-XIE. Retrieved April 07, 2014, from http://www.publications.gc.ca/Collection/Statcan/81-597-X/81-597-XIE.pdf.

OECD. (2001, July 13). Bridging the digital divide: Issues and policies in OECD Countries . DSTI/ICCP(2001)9/FINAL. OECD: Paris.

Pew Research Center. (2011, May). Demographics of internet users. Pew Internet and American Life Project . Retrieved January 12, 2012, from http://www.pewinternet.org/Trend-Data/Whos-Online.aspx.

The Economist. (2009, March 23). Planned Obsolescence. The Economist Newspaper Limited . Retrieved January 12, 2012, from http://www.economist.com/node/13354332.

Sciadas, George. (2003). Monitoring the digital divide … and beyond. InfoDev/World Bank Group . Retrieved January 22, 2012, from http://www.infodev.org/en/Publication.20.html.

StEP. (2014). Canada: Overview of E-waste related information. StEP: Solving the E-Waste problem . Retrieved April 23, 2014, from http://step-initiative.org/Overview_Canada.html.

Washington, Jesse. (2011, January 10). For minorities, New ‘digital divide’ seen. Pew Internet and American Life Project . Retrieved July 12, 2016, from http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-01-10-minorities-online_N.htm.

8.2. Media and Technology in Society Anderson, C.A., and B.J. Bushman. (2001). Effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial behavior: A meta-analytic review of the scientific literature. Psychological Science, 12:353–359.

Anderson, Craig. (2003, October). Violent video games: Myths, facts and unanswered questions. American Psychological Association . Retrieved January 13, 2012, from http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2003/10/anderson.aspx.

Anderson, Philip and Michael Tushman. (1990). Technological discontinuities and dominant designs: A cyclical model of technological change. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35:604–633.

Cisco. (2012). Gen Y: New Dawn for Work, Play, Identity. Cisco Connected world technology report PDF . Retrieved February 4, 2012 from http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns1120/2012-CCWTR-Chapter1-Global-Results.pdf

Claburn, Thomas. (2014, April). Google has plans for Titan drones. Information Week . Retrieved April 16, 2014, from http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/mobile-devices/google-has-plans-for-titan-drones/d/d-id/1204456.

Alphabet. (2014). Google invester relations: Financial tables 2014. Alphabet Investor Relations . Retrieved April 14, 2014, from http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html.

IDC Custom Solutions. (2012). Always connected: How smartphones and social media keep us connected. [PDF] Always connected for Facebook Case Study (IDC Research Report). Retrieved February 4, 2014, from https://www.idc.com/prodserv/custom_solutions/download/case_studies/PLAN-BB_Always_Connected_for_Facebook.pdf.

Ladurantaye, Steve. (2013, June 05). Newspaper revenue to drop 20 per cent by 2017, report predicts. The Globe and Mail . Retrieved April 07, 2014, from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/newspaper-revenue-to-drop-20-per-cent-by-2017-report-predicts/article12357351/.

Lievrouw, Leah A. and Sonia Livingstone. (Eds.). (2006). Handbook of new media: Social shaping and social consequences. London: SAGE Publications.

McGivern, Ronald. (1990). Catholic ideals and populist self-help: Ideology and action in the Antigonish Cooperative Adult Education Movement in Eastern Nova Scotia, 1920-1940. M.A. Thesis, Simon Fraser University.

Mercola, Dr. Joseph. (2011, December 25). Finally… Solo farmer fights Monsanto and wins. Mercola.com . Retrieved April 07, 2014, from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/12/25/percy-schmeiser-farmer-who-beat-monsanto.aspx.

Monsanto, (N.d.). Percy Schmeiser . Retrieved April 07, 2014, from http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/percy-schmeiser.aspx.

(MRIA) Marketing Research and Intelligence Association of Canada [website] . (N.d.). Retrieved April 15, 2014: (http://mria-arim.ca/)

NewsComAu. (2013, September 21). Gadgets – Cell phones: Comedian Louis CK’s compelling philosophy: ‘Smartphones are toxic’. NewsComAu. Retrieved February 4, 2014 from http://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/comedian-louis-ck8217s-compelling-philosophy-8216smartphones-are-toxic8217/story-fn6vihic-1226724328876.

O’Reilly, Terry. (2014, February 22). Radio is dead. Long live radio. CBC : Under the Influence. Retrieved, April 09, 2014, from http://www.cbc.ca/undertheinfluence/season-3/2014/02/22/radio-is-dead-long-live-radio-2/.

ProCon. (2012, January 5). Video games . Retrieved January 12, 2012, from http://videogames.procon.org/.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. (2011). General information concerning patents . Retrieved January 12, 2012, from http://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/general-information-concerning-patents.

van de Donk, W., B.D. Loader, P.G. Nixon, and D. Rucht. (Eds.). (2004). Cyberprotest: New media, citizens, and social movements . New York: Routledge.

Wordstream. (N.d.). How does Google make its money: The 20 most expensive keywords in Google AdWords. Retrieved April 14, 2014, from http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive-keywords.

Wikipedia. (2010). “Television in Canada” Retrieved April 09, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_Canada.

World Association of Newspapers. (2004). Newspapers: A brief history.” Retrieved January 12, 2012, from http://www.wan-press.org/article.php3?id_article=2821.

8.3. Global Implications Bristow, Michael. (2011, November 3). Can China control social media revolution? BBC News China . Retrieved January 14, 2012, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15383756.

CMCRP, Canadian Media Concentration Research Project . (N.d.). Retrieved April 15, 2014, from http://www.cmcrp.org/.

Compaine, B. (2005). Global media. In living in the information age: A new media reader (pp. 97-101). Belmont: Wadsworth Thomson Learning.

Friedman, Thomas. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century . New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

ITU News. (2009, November). ITU Telecom World 2009: Special report: Reflecting new needs and realities . Retrieved January 14, 2012, from http://www.itu.int/net/itunews/issues/2009/09/26.aspx.

Jan, Mirza. (2009). Globalization of media: Key issues and dimensions. European Journal of Scientific Research, 29:66–75.

Perkins, Anne. (2010, January 14). Are mobile phones Africa’s silver bullet? The Guardian, Katine Chronicles blog, Livelihoods . Retrieved January 12, 2012 from https://www.theguardian.com/katine/katine-chronicles-blog/2010/jan/14/mobile-phones-africa.

McLuhan, Marshall. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man . New York: McGraw-Hill.

Newspapers Canada. (2013). Ownership . Retrieved April 15, 2014, from http://www.cmcrp.org/.

Pierson, David. (2012, January 16). Number of web users in China hits 513 million. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 16, 2012, from http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2012/01/chinese-web-users-grow-to-513-million.html.

Rowswell, Mark. (2014). Dashan Live [online]. Retrieved April 15, 2014, from http://dashan.com/en.

Theckedath, Dillan and Thomas, Terrence J. (2012). Media ownership and convergence in Canada. [PDF] In Brief† No. 2012-17-E, Library of Parliament Research Publications, Parliament of Canada. Retrieved April 15, 2014, from http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2012/bdp-lop/eb/2012-17-eng.pdf.

World Bank. (2008). Global economic prospects 2008: Technology diffusion in the developing world. [PDF] World Bank . Retrieved January 24, 2012, from http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTGEP2008/Resources/GEP_ove_001-016.pdf.

8.4. Theoretical Perspectives on Media and Technology Brasted, Monica. (2010). Care Bears vs. Transformers: Gender stereotypes in advertisements. The Socjourn . Retrieved January 10, 2012, from http://www.sociology.org/media-studies/care-bears-vs-transformers-gender-stereotypes-in-advertisements.

Foucault, Michel. (1975). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison . New York: Vintage Books.

Fox, Jesse and Jeremy Bailenson. (2009). Virtual virgins and vamps: The effects of exposure to female characters’ sexualized appearance and gaze in an immersive virtual environment. Sex Roles, 61:147–157.

Gamson, William, David Croteau, William Hoynes, and Theodore Sasson. (1992). Media images and the social construction of reality. Annual Review of Sociology, 18:373–393.

Gentile, Douglas, Lindsay Mathieson, and Nikki Crick. (2011). Media violence associations with the form and function of aggression among elementary school children. Social Development 20:213–232.

Kautiainen, S., L. Koivusilta, T. Lintonen, S. M. Virtanen, and A. Rimpelä. (2005). Use of information and communication technology and prevalence of overweight and obesity among adolescents. International Journal of Obesity, 29:925–933.

Kerr, Elizabeth. (2014, February 07). Cyberfeminism and postmodern technological discourse. 24th Annual Thinking Gender Conference, UCLA Center for the Study of Women . Retrieved April 18, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGzW8Q7Fui4.

Krahe, Barbara, Ingrid Moller, L. Huesmann, Lucyna Kirwil, Julianec Felber, and Anja Berger. (2011). Desensitization to media violence: Links with habitual media violence exposure, aggressive cognitions, and aggressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100:630–646.

Lazerfeld, Paul F. and Robert K. Merton. (1948). Mass communication, popular taste, and organized social action. The Communication of Ideas . New York: Harper & Bros.

Mills, C. Wright. (2000). The Power Elite . New York: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1956)

NielsenWire. (2011, May 3). Nielsen estimates number of U.S. television homes to be 114.7 million. The Nielsen Company, Media and Entertainment . Retrieved January 15, 2012, from http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/nielsen-estimates-number-of-u-s-television-homes-to-be-114-7-million/.

Pierce, Tess. (2011). Singing at the digital well: Blogs as cyberfeminist sites of resistance. Feminist Formations, 23:196–209.

Savage, Joanne. (2003). Does viewing violent media really cause criminal violence? Science Direct [Website]. Retrieved July 8, 2016, from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178903000855.

Shoemaker, Pamela and Tim Voss. (2009). Media gatekeeping. In D. Stacks and M. Salwen (Eds.), An Integrated Approach to Communication Theory and Research. (2nd ed.). (pp. 75–89). New York: Routledge.

TVB. (2014). TV basics, 2013-2014. [PDF] Television Bureau of Canada , Retrieved April 15, 2014, from http://www.tvb.ca/page_files/pdf/InfoCentre/TVBasics.pdf.

Economics and Statistic Administration. (2011, August). Women in STEM: A gender gap to innovation. [PDF] U.S. Department of Commerce . Retrieved February 22, 2012, from http://www.esa.doc.gov/sites/default/files/reports/documents/womeninstemagaptoinnovation8311.pdf/.

Solutions to Section Quiz

1 C, | 2 B, | 3 D, | 4 A, | 5 C, | 6 B, | 7 D, | 8 A, | 9 D, | 10 A, | 11 B, | 12 A, | 13 D, | 14 B, | 15 A, | 16 D, | 17 A, | 18 B, | 19 C, | 20 A, [Return to Quiz]

Image Attributions

Figure 8.5. Electronic waste by Curtis Palmer (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Electronic_waste.jpg) used under CC BY 2.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en)

Long Descriptions

Figure 8.2 Long Description: Photo (A) a stone arrow head, Photo (B) Draft horses pulling a plow, Photo (C) An abacus, Photo (D) computer servers, Photo (E) a laptop, Photo (F) a smart phone. [Return to Figure 8.2] . Figure 8.9 Long Description: A twitter post reading: 5 ways to help: call Egypt consul in SF, host petition on your blog, write a letter 2 editor, Digg the CNN story, email. In the replies, people are calling on authorities to release Mohammed, who was still missing. [Return to Figure 8.9] .

Share This Book

Browse Course Material

Course info.

Dr. K.J. Surkan

Departments

Women's and Gender Studies

As Taught In

Communication
Gender Studies
Women's Studies

Learning Resource Types

Gender & media: collaborations in feminism and technology, assignments, blog commentary and collaboration.

Each student will keep a Wordpress blog in response to class topics and readings. You are encouraged to update it frequently, but at least a minimum of one post a week, including images and links when relevant. Your blog may be a place where you choose to explore and develop ideas for the final project. We will be reading and responding to each other’s blogs, so please keep the content germane to the class. In addition, this semester we will be collaborating with other courses at several key points in the term; these collaborative conversations will also count as part of your commentary grade for the course.

Critical Response Paper

One short critical response paper (3–4 pages) will be due during the semester. This essay is an opportunity for you to reflect on a key concept through a close critical reading of one text, or a comparison of two. Typically this first assignment is an interrogation of persuasive speech or use of imagery in advertising, whether for a specific product or a political candidate. You may wish to pursue a theoretical question raised in our class discussions or through the blog comments in more detail in your critical response paper. See the details about the critical response paper (PDF) .

Keyword Video

Students will record a 3–5 minute keyword video about a selected course reading with a peer. The dialogue must address course themes and integrate questions / comments / critiques. The keyword video may take the form of a conversation, an interview, an in-the-field documentary, voice-over video, or speech video. The video should be uploaded to Vimeo and / or blog and it must be titled with a keyword. See details of the keyword video assignment (PDF) .

Final Paper or “Selfie” Project

The final project can take one of many forms, and should be 5-8 pages in length for a paper, or an alternative project representing equivalent depth of analysis. (This could be a collaborative group project and could take the form of a game, video production, social media event, performance, exhibition, or other creative format engaging with feminist media analysis.) The final will demonstrate your proficiency in applying concepts relevant to race, class, sexual identity and gender analysis of media studies to a specific cultural production of your choice. Students will also have the option of developing a project that theorizes “selfies” from a feminist media studies perspective.

Read more about the final project assignment (PDF) .

You are leaving MIT OpenCourseWare

Saved searches

Use saved searches to filter your results more quickly.

To see all available qualifiers, see our documentation .

Notifications You must be signed in to change notification settings

NPTEL Assignment Answers and Solutions 2024 (July-Dec). Get Answers of Week 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 8 10 11 12 for all courses. This guide offers clear and accurate answers for your all assignments across various NPTEL courses

progiez/nptel-assignment-answers

Folders and files.

Name		Name
164 Commits

Repository files navigation

Nptel assignment answers 2024 with solutions (july-dec), how to use this repo to see nptel assignment answers and solutions 2024.

If you're here to find answers for specific NPTEL courses, follow these steps:

Access the Course Folder:

Navigate to the folder of the course you are interested in. Each course has its own folder named accordingly, such as cloud-computing or computer-architecture .

Locate the Weekly Assignment Files:

Inside the course folder, you will find files named week-01.md , week-02.md , and so on up to week-12.md . These files contain the assignment answers for each respective week.

Select the Week File:

Click on the file corresponding to the week you are interested in. For example, if you need answers for Week 3, open the week-03.md file.

Review the Answers:

Each week-XX.md file provides detailed solutions and explanations for that week’s assignments. Review these files to find the information you need.

By following these steps, you can easily locate and use the assignment answers and solutions for the NPTEL courses provided in this repository. We hope this resource assists you in your studies!

List of Courses

Here's a list of courses currently available in this repository:

Artificial Intelligence Search Methods for Problem Solving
Cloud Computing
Computer Architecture
Cyber Security and Privacy
Data Science for Engineers
Data Structure and Algorithms Using Java
Database Management System
Deep Learning for Computer Vision
Deep Learning IIT Ropar
Digital Circuits
Ethical Hacking
Introduction to Industry 4.0 and Industrial IoT
Introduction to Internet of Things
Introduction to Machine Learning IIT KGP
Introduction to Machine Learning
Introduction to Operating Systems
ML and Deep Learning Fundamentals and Applications
Problem Solving Through Programming in C
Programming DSA Using Python
Programming in Java
Programming in Modern C
Python for Data Science
Soft Skill Development
Soft Skills
Software Engineering
Software Testing
The Joy of Computation Using Python
Theory of Computation

Note: This repository is intended for educational purposes only. Please use the provided answers as a guide to better understand the course material.

📧 Contact Us

For any queries or support, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] .

🌐 Connect with Progiez

⭐️ Follow Us

Stay updated with our latest content and updates by following us on our social media platforms!

🚀 About Progiez

Progiez is an online educational platform aimed at providing solutions to various online courses offered by NPTEL, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, and more. Explore our resources for detailed answers and solutions to enhance your learning experience.

Disclaimer: This repository is intended for educational purposes only. All content is provided for reference and should not be submitted as your own work.

Contributors 3

COMMENTS

8.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Media and Technology
A European agency, the Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities for Men and Women (2010), issued an opinion report suggesting that while there is the potential for new media forms to perpetuate gender stereotypes and the gender gap in technology and media access, at the same time new media could offer alternative forums for feminist groups and ...
1.3 The Evolution of Media
Key Takeaways. Media fulfills several roles in society, including the following: entertaining and providing an outlet for the imagination, educating and informing, serving as a public forum for the discussion of important issues, and. acting as a watchdog for government, business, and other institutions.
Technology Lesson Plans
Technology Lesson Plans and Classroom Activities. This indicates resources located on The Teacher's Corner. Pattern Recognition Skills - Seasonal Color by Number Grades PreK-K-1st **NEW**. Patterns help students understand how things are organized and can make things look interesting. Ultimately, patterns make our tasks simpler.
Middle School Technology Lesson Plans: Where to Find Them
The 5 Best Cyberbullying Resources for Middle School. 3. Google Suite Lessons. Example: Google Drive Bundle from Gavin Middleton. Because they're easy to use and allow for quick, web-based collaboration, more and more teachers include the Google suite of applications in their middle school technology lesson plans.
Mass Communication, Media, and Culture
Exercises at end of sections could be jumping off point for discussions or assignments. Chapters end with review and critical thinking connections plus career guidance. ... historical narrative sketching the *ongoing evolution* of media technology and how that technology shapes and is shaped by culture — and that is what he set out to deliver ...
Chapter 8. Media and Technology
Define technology and describe its evolution. Understand technological inequality and issues related to unequal access to technology. Describe the role of planned obsolescence in technological development. 8.2. Media and Technology in Society. Describe the evolution and current role of different media, like newspapers, television, and new media.
Media and Technology in Society
Technology and the media are interwoven, and neither can be separated from contemporary society in most core and semi-peripheral nations. Media is a term that refers to all print, digital, and electronic means of communication. From the time the printing press was created (and even before), technology has influenced how and where information is shared.
History of Media and Technology
History of Media and Technology addresses the mutually influential histories of communications media and technological development, focusing on the shift from analog to digital cultures that began mid-century and continues to the present. The approach the series takes to the study of media and technology is a multifaceted one that includes theoretical and philosophical works, histories ...
Assignments
Students are expected to write short response papers on the course readings. Assignment 1 ()Assignment 2 ()Assignment 3 ()Assignment 4 ()The final project for the class, worth 50% of the grade, includes a 20-25 page paper and an oral presentation.
50 Activities To Promote Digital Media Literacy In Students
Image attribution flickr user flickeringbrad; 50 Challenging Activities To Promote Digital Media Literacy In Students. # Bloom's Taxonomy # Middle & High School # Terry Heick # Veteran Teacher. Here are 50 ways teachers across content areas--and homeschooled learners too--can promote digital media literacy.
16.1 New Media Technologies
When we consider "old media," which consist of mainly print, radio, and television/movies, we see that their presence in our lives and our societies was limited to a few places. For example, television and radio have long been key technology features in the home. Movies were primarily enjoyed in theaters until VCRs and DVD players brought ...
SNHU
Media Communication and Visual Literacy (COM130) 9 days ago. First, review the module resources and re-examine the media artifact that you analyzed in the Module Two journal task—including your journal assignment and instructor feedback. Next, write a two- to three-paragraph journal assignment that addresses the following: Message: What do ...
Digital media and society: Covering social media, technology and a
Supplemental reading: Jennifer Earl, Digitally Enabled Social Change, 2011; Leah Lievrouw, Alternative and Activist New Media, 2011. Assignment: Broaden the previous week's analysis of a few specific advocacy organizations and offer a look at activist media around an entire issue area — for example, human rights or climate change.
Module 3 Discussion: Media and Technology
Choose a movie of any genre (fiction, documentary, etc.) that emphasizes the role of social media. STEP 2: Watch the movie you have chosen. STEP 3: Write a discussion post between 250-500 words that: Identifies the movie and the genre you chose, then summarizes the movie. Describes the impact of social media to the characters in the movie.
Using Media to Enhance Teaching and Learning
The use of media to enhance teaching and learning complements traditional approaches to learning. Effective instruction builds bridges between students' knowledge and the learning objectives of the course. Using media engages students, aids student retention of knowledge, motivates interest in the subject matter, and illustrates the relevance ...
PDF ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE Digital media assignments in undergraduate
Technology (ALT), a UK-based professional and scholarly society and membership organisation. ALT is registered charity number 1063519. ... Digital media assignments in undergraduate science education: an evidence-based approach Jorge Reyna* Senior Learning Designer, Education and Training, The Royal Australia and
Digital media assignments
The following points should be considered before starting a digital media assignment. Meet with a learning technology consultant early in the design process for the assignment. Study different examples of digital media assignments to understand and recognize how others have presented information in a multimodal format. Develop a digital media ...
Multimedia Assignments
by LSA Learning & Teaching Technology Consultants. Multimedia assignments provide rich learning experiences for students in which students can combine different types of media such as text, images, audio, videos, maps, etc. to create a cohesive project. The format of multimedia assignments offers more flexibility and choices than a traditional ...
10 Digital Art Projects That Will Spark Student Creativity
Using printable tattoo paper, create digital designs using an inkjet printer. This is a fun way to explore technology, and your students will get to wear their designs! 4. Mosaic Portraits. If you use Photoshop, you know there are countless features to the program.
Venn Diagram of Information, Technology, and Media Literacy
Download Venn Diagram of Information, Technology, and Media Literacy and more Technology Assignments in PDF only on Docsity! Media, Information, and Technology Literacy Used for factual scanning, and updated information Used for the interpretation of media Both uses technology as the medium - Ability to use technology ethically and efficiently - Used for participation in the digital ...
Understanding the role of digital technologies in education: A review
Social media as a learning tool has come a long way. Large numbers of teachers and students use social media as an essential element of the overall e-learning experience. ... An online classroom calendar, where we may display class schedules, assignment schedules, field excursions, speaker events, examinations schedules, or semester breaks ...
Chapter 8. Media and Technology
Define technology and describe its evolution. Understand technological inequality and issues related to unequal access to technology. Describe the role of planned obsolescence in technological development. 8.2. Media and Technology in Society. Describe the evolution and current role of different media, like newspapers, television, and new media.
Assignments
The final will demonstrate your proficiency in applying concepts relevant to race, class, sexual identity and gender analysis of media studies to a specific cultural production of your choice. Students will also have the option of developing a project that theorizes "selfies" from a feminist media studies perspective.
NPTEL Assignment Answers 2024 with Solutions (July-Dec)
These files contain the assignment answers for each respective week. Select the Week File: Click on the file corresponding to the week you are interested in. For example, if you need answers for Week 3, open the week-03.md file. Review the Answers: Each week-XX.md file provides detailed solutions and explanations for that week's assignments ...