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Lack of local or specific topical focus is a common criticism of mass media. A mass news media outlet is often forced to cover national and international news due to it having to cater for and be relevant for a wide demographic. As such, it has to skip over many interesting or important local stories because they simply do not interest the large majority of their viewers. An example given by the website WiseGeek is that "the residents of a community might view their fight against development as critical, but the story would only attract the attention of the mass media if the fight became controversial or if precedents of some form were set".
The term "mass" suggests that the recipients of media products constitute a vast sea of passive, undifferentiated individuals. This is an image associated with some earlier critiques of "mass culture" and mass society which generally assumed that the development of mass communication has had a largely negative impact on modern social life, creating a kind of bland and homogeneous culture which entertains individuals without challenging them. However, interactive digital media have also been seen to challenge the read-only paradigm of earlier broadcast media.
Whilst some refer to the mass media as "opiate of the masses", others argue that is a vital aspect of human societies. By understanding mass media, one is then able to analyze and find a deeper understanding of one's population and culture. This valuable and powerful ability is one reason why the field of media studies is popular. As WiseGeek says, "watching, reading, and interacting with a nation's mass media can provide clues into how people think, especially if a diverse assortment of mass media sources are perused". Since the 1950s, in the countries that have reached a high level of industrialization, the mass media of cinema, radio and TV have a key role in political power. Contemporary research demonstrates an increasing level of concentration of media ownership, with many media industries already highly concentrated and dominated by a very small number of firms.
Mass media and racism
Mass media has played a large role in the way white Americans perceive African-Americans. The media focus on African-American in the contexts of crime, drug use, gang violence, and other forms of anti-social behavior has resulted in a distorted and harmful public perception of African-Americans. African-Americans have been subjected to oppression and discrimination for the past few hundred years. According to Stephen Balkaran in his article Mass Media and Racism, "The media has played a key role in perpetuating the effects of this historical oppression and in contributing to African-Americans' continuing status as second-class citizens". This has resulted in an uncertainty among white Americans as to what the genuine nature of African-Americans really is. Despite the resulting racial divide, the fact that these people are undeniably American has "raised doubts about the white man's value system".
Organize a debate.
Suggested statements are:
1. Mass media should be censored.
2. A successful journalist never takes ethical issues into consideration.
3. Press isn’t the 4th power, it’s the first and foremost.
4. Everything is as good as you perceive it.
5. There is no racist problem in a contemporary society – it’s extinct.
Half of the students should take a “pro”-position, supporting this statement, the other half should stick to “contra”-position, supporting the opposite viewpoint. Then, with pre-prepared arguments the sides should debate. There may be two judges to see who was more convincing and accurate in argumentations and announce the winner.
Professions involving mass media:
Journalism
Journalism is the discipline of collecting, analyzing, verifying and presenting information regarding current events, trends, issues and people. News-oriented journalism is sometimes described as the "first rough draft of history" (attributed to Phil Graham), because journalists often record important events, producing news articles on short deadlines. While under pressure to be first with their stories, news media organizations usually edit and proofread their reports prior to publication, adhering to each organization's standards of accuracy, quality and style. Many news organizations claim proud traditions of holding government officials and institutions accountable to the public, while media critics have raised questions about holding the press itself accountable.
Public relations
Public relations is the art and science of managing communication between an organization and its key publics to build, manage and sustain its positive image. Examples include:
Publishing
Publishing is the industry concerned with the production of literature or information – the activity of making information available for public view. In some cases, authors may be their own publishers. Traditionally, the term refers to the distribution of printed works such as books and newspapers. With the advent of digital information systems and the Internet, the scope of publishing has expanded to include websites, blogs, and the like. As a business, publishing includes the development, marketing, production, and distribution of newspapers, magazines, books, literary works, musical works, software, other works dealing with information. Publication is also important as a legal concept; as the process of giving formal notice to the world of a significant intention.
Software publishing
A software publisher is a publishing company in the software industry between the developer and the distributor. In some companies, two or all three of these roles may be combined (and indeed, may reside in a single person). Software publishers often license software from developers with specific limitations, such as a time limit or geographical region. The terms of licensing vary enormously, and are typically secret. Developers may use publishers to reach larger or foreign markets, or to avoid focusing on marketing. Or publishers may use developers to create software to meet a market need that the publisher has identified.
Advertising
Commercial broadcasting is primarily based on the practice of airing radio advertisements and television advertisements for profit. This is in contrast to public broadcasting, which receives government subsidies. In the United States, non-commercial educational (NCE) television and radio exists in the form of community radio; however, premium cable services such as HBO and Showtime generally operate solely on subscriber fees and do not sell advertising. Radio broadcasting originally began without paid commercials. As time went on, however, advertisements seemed less objectionable to both the public and government regulators and became more common. While commercial broadcasting was unexpected in radio, in television it was planned due to commercial radio's success. Television began with commercial sponsorship and later transformed to paid commercial time. When problems arose over patents and corporate marketing strategies, regulatory decisions were made by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to control commercial broadcasting.
Paid programming
Commercial broadcasting overlaps with paid services such as cable television and radio and satellite television and radio. Such services are generally partially or wholly paid for by local subscribers and is known as leased access. Other programming (particularly on cable television) is produced by companies operating in much the same manner as advertising-funded commercial broadcasters, and they (and often the local cable provider) sell commercial time in a similar manner. The FCC's interest in program control began with the chain-broadcasting investigation of the late 1930s, culminating in the "Blue Book" of 1946, Public Service Responsibility for Broadcast Licensees. The Blue Book differentiated between mass-appeal sponsored programs and unsponsored "sustaining" programs offered by the radio networks. This sustained programming, according to the Blue Book, had five features serving the public interest:
Commercial broadcasting in America
Commercial broadcasting is the dominant type of broadcasting in the United States and most of Latin America. The best-known commercial broadcasters in the United States are the ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC television networks and the Clear Channel Communications radio network, based in the United States. Major cable television in the united states operators include Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable. Direct-broadcast satellite (DBS) services include DirecTV and Dish Network.
In an hour of broadcast time on a commercial broadcasting station, 10 to 20 minutes are typically devoted to advertising. Advertisers pay a certain amount of money to air their commercials, usually based upon program ratings or the audience measurement of a station or network. This makes commercial broadcasters more accountable to advertisers than public broadcasting, a disadvantage of commercial radio and television.
Principles of citizen media
Citizen media is a term coined by Clemencia Rodriguez, who defined this concept as 'the transformative processes they bring about within participants and their communities.' Citizen media refers to the ways in which audiences can also become participants in the media using the different resources offered. In the modern age, new technologies have brought about different media technologies which became the ground for citizen participation.
There are many forms of citizen-produced media including blogs, vlogs, podcasts, digital storytelling, community radio, participatory video and more, and may be distributed via television, radio, internet, email, movie theatre, DVD and many other forms. Many organizations and institutions exist to facilitate the production of media by private citizens including, but not limited to, Public, educational, and government access (PEG) cable TV channels, Independent Media Centers and community technology centers.
Citizen media has bloomed with the advent of technological tools and systems that facilitate production and distribution of media. Of these technologies, none has advanced citizen media more than the Internet. With the birth of the Internet and into the 1990s, citizen media has responded to traditional mass media's neglect of public interest and partisan portrayal of news and world events. Media produced by private citizens may be as factual, satirical, neutral or biased as any other form of media but has no political, social or corporate affiliation.
By 2007, the success of small, independent, private journalists began to rival corporate mass media in terms of audience and distribution. Citizen produced media has earned higher status and public credibility since the 2004 US Presidential elections and has since been widely replicated by corporate marketing and political campaigning. Traditional news outlets and commercial media giants have experienced declines in profit and revenue which can be directly attributed to the wider acceptance of citizen produced media as an official source of information.
Many people prefer the term 'participatory media' to 'citizen media' as citizen has a necessary relation to a concept of the nation-state. The fact that many millions of people are considered stateless and often without citizenship limits the concept to those recognised only by governments. Additionally the very global nature of many participatory media initiatives, such as the Independent Media Center, makes talking of journalism in relation to a particular nation-state largely redundant as its production and dissemination do not recognise national boundaries.
A different way of understanding Citizen Media emerged from cultural studies and the observations made from within this theoretical frame work about how the circuit of mass communication was never complete and always contested, since the personal, political, and emotional meanings and investments that the audience made in the mass-distributed products of popular culture were frequently at odds with the intended meanings of their producers.
Part 4. Arts. How is America inspired?
Pre-reading task. Discussion club.
Get in pairs and discuss:
-) what form of art is America famous for
-) comment on your attitude to modern art
-) recall some names of American people of art and comment on their creations
PART 1.
1) Reading. Read the text carefully and retell it close to the original. Be ready to discuss it.
Art versus Science.
One can distinguish two branches of human work: the arts and the sciences. The sciences require knowledge, observation, identification, description, experimentation and theoretical explanation. The arts on the contrary require skill. That means the ability to work well with a part of the body. It is the combination of talent and technique. An artist is a man who can do something well with his own hands and tools. Some time ago everything that was made with tools was "artificial", not natural. The word "manufacture", for example, once meant "to make by hand".
Everything is a bit different nowadays. The word "art" has a special meaning. It means something beautiful. The paintings of skilled painters are appreciated and admired by millions of people today, by those who can see the beauty. Art comprises weaving rugs, tapestries, ceramic work and what not. So there are a lot of types of art. Nevertheless one can trace basic principles in art. All kinds of it require the same characteristics. The separate parts of a work of art should be arranged in pattern. The form itself, a pleasing shape and balance are extremely important.
Art inspires the human spirit. Painters, sculptors, musicians, writers, weavers - they all contribute to a better life for us.
Visual Art of the United States
American art encompasses the history of painting and visual art in the United States. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists primarily painted landscapes and portraits in a realistic style based mainly on Western painting and European arts. A parallel development taking shape in rural America was the American craft movement, which began as a reaction to the industrial revolution. Developments in modern art in Europe came to America from exhibitions in New York City such as the Armory Show in 1913. After World War II, New York replaced Paris as the center of the art world. Since then many American movements have shaped Modern and Postmodern art. Art in the United States today covers a huge range of styles. Let’s go chronologically…
XVIII century
After the Declaration of Independence in 1776, which marked the official beginning of the American national identity, the new nation needed a history, and part of that history would be expressed visually. Most of early American art (from the late 18th through the early 19th century) consists of history painting and especially portraits. As in Colonial America, many of the painters who specialized in portraits were essentially self-taught; notable among them are Joseph Badger, John Brewster, Jr., and William Jennys. The young nation's artists generally emulated the style of British art, which they knew through prints and the paintings of English-trained immigrants such as John Smibert and John Wollaston.
Robert Feke (1707-52), an untrained painter of the colonial period, achieved a sophisticated style based on Smibert's example. Charles Willson Peale, who gained much of his earliest art training by studying Smibert's copies of European paintings, painted portraits of many of the important figures of the American Revolution. Peale's younger brother James Peale and four of Peale's sons – Raphaelle Peale, Rembrandt Peale, Rubens Peale and Titian Peale – all with their telling names – were also artists. Painters such as Gilbert Stuart made portraits of the newly elected government officials, which became iconic after being reproduced on various U.S. Postage stamps of the 19th century and early 20th century, while John Singleton Copley painted emblematic portraits for the increasingly prosperous merchant class, including a portrait of Paul Revere. The original version of his most famous painting, Watson and the Shark, is in the collection of The National Gallery of Art while there is another version in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and a third version in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Benjamin West painted portraits as well as history paintings of the French and Indian War. West also worked in London where many American artists studied under him.
John Trumbull painted large battle scenes of the Revolutionary War. When landscape was painted it was most often done to show how much property a subject owned, or as a picturesque background for a portrait.
XIX century
Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak, 1863,
Metropolitan Museum of Art – an example of the Hudson River School
Mary Cassatt, The Bath 1891–1892, Art Institute of Chicago
James McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother, 1871, popularly known as Whistler's Mothe r, Musйe d'Orsay, Paris
America's first well-known school of painting – the Hudson River School – appeared in 1820. Thomas Cole pioneered the movement which included Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Doughty and several others. As with music and literature, this development was delayed until artists perceived that the New World offered subjects unique to itself; in this case the westward expansion of settlement brought the transcendent beauty of frontier landscapes to painters' attention.
The Hudson River painters' directness and simplicity of vision influenced and inspired such later artists as John Kensett and the Luminists; as well as George Inness and the tonalists (which included Albert Pinkham Ryder and Ralph Blakelock among others), and Winslow Homer (1836-1910), who depicted rural America—the sea, the mountains, and the people who lived near them. The Hudson River School landscape painter Robert S. Duncanson was one of the first important African American painters. John James Audubon, an ornothologist whose paintings documented birds, was one of the most important naturalist artists in America. His major work, a set of colored prints entitled The Birds of America (1827–1839), is considered one of the finest ornithological works ever completed. Edward Hicks was an American folk painter and distinguished minister of the Society of Friends. He became a Quaker icon because of his paintings.
The most successful American sculptor of his era, Hiram Powers, left America in his early thirties to spend the rest of his life in Europe, where he adopted a conventional style for his idealized female nudes such as Eve Tempted. Several important painters who are considered American spent much of their lives in Europe, all of whom were influenced by French Impressionism. Theodore Robinson visited France in 1887, befriended Monet, and became one of the first American painters to adopt the new technique. In the last decades of the century American Impressionism, as practiced by artists such as Childe Hassam and Frank W. Benson, became a popular style.
Controversy soon became a way of life for American artists. In fact, much of American painting and sculpture since 1900 has been a series of revolts against tradition. "To hell with the artistic values," announced Robert Henri (1865-1929). He was the leader of what critics called the Ashcan school of painting, after the group's portrayals of the squalid aspects of city life. American realism became the new direction for American visual artists at the turn of the 20th century. The Ashcan painters George Bellows, Everett Shinn, George Benjamin Luks, William Glackens, and John Sloan were among those who developed socially conscious imagery in their works.
The photographer Alfred Steiglitz (1864-1946) led the Photo-Secession movement, which created pathways for photography as an emerging art form. Soon the Ashcan school artists gave way to modernists arriving from Europe—the cubists and abstract painters promoted by Stieglitz at his gallery in New York City.
Marsden Hartley, Painting No. 48, 1913, Brooklyn Museum
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