Course objectives:

• Introduce the students into the field of media studies.

• Introduce and explain basic concepts, essentials, models and theories of media in a simplified and
easy-to-digest way.
• Show the students how the media (TV, film, radio, print, internet, social network… etc.) shape
rather than simply mirror people, things and realities.
• To study how the Media convey, maintain and consolidate cultural patterns (beliefs, values,
norms and social practices) through their representation of power, gender, race, ethnicity,
beauty… etc.
• Study media functions, media effects, audiences, encoding and decoding media content, news
writing/editing process, journalism ethics, and social new media networks. (Depending on the
time available).
• Make references and applications to the Moroccan media context as compared to other foreign
media contexts (Arab, Western and Japanese).
• Introduce students to media and communication research quantitative and qualitative
methodology.

Course Content:
• Week 1: Course Introduction – Overview
• Week 2: Making sense of Mass Communication and Mass Media.
• Week 3: Media Functions and Media Aesthetics
• Week 4: Media Effects and Audiences
• Week 5: Encoding and Decoding Media Content
• Week 6: Modern News Editing and Journalism Ethics
• Week 7: Cyberspace, Especially Social Media from PC/Laptops to Smart Phones
• Week 8: Introduction to Media and Communication Research Methods + Recap
• Teaching Method: lectures, critical and analytical approaches to specific print and audiovisual
media outlets, in-class organized thematic discussions and debates, screenings and readings in
national and international papers, in-class short presentations.
• Students Evaluation Method:
• Students will be evaluated and graded in the following way:
Discipline, attendance and participation, including in-class presentations: 40%
Final test: 60%

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 Introduction to Media Studies

• Understanding basics of Mass-Communication and Mass-Media

• The five focal points in Mass-Communication theory:

Mass- Creator
Communication (Sender/Producer/
Text Artist) of the text

Medium

Society
Audience (Morocco, e.g.)

Exemplifying the Five Focal Points

“Moubasharatan Maakum”: a Political, social and Economic Debate Show on 2M.

“Moubasharatan 2M News
Maakum” Production Team –
J. Goulhsen

2M TV Station

General Moroccan
Moroccan Society
Audience

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“Qessat ‘Nnass”: A Social TV program animated by Nouhad B.

“Qessat Medi1 TV
‘Nnass” Production Team –
Nouhad B.

Medi1 TV

-12 General Moroccan

Moroccan Society
Audience

“Arabs Got Talent”: An Arab Popular Competition TV Program

“Arabs

Got Talent” MBC4

MBC

General Arab Arab Society

Audience-
at Large
22Countries &
Overseas

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 • Defining some basic terms:
➢ Mass-Communication: disseminating information (texts/messages) to large numbers
of people – the masses.
➢ Mass-Media: the means carrying or communicating this information or these messages
to these masses.
➢ Mass: “the great body of the people of a nation” (dictionary definition). A
heterogeneous large group of people (community, country, national community,
international/global community, etc.) whose members do not know each other and has
the form of a “loose organization” (E. Friedson).
➢ Masses perform activities which are group-based. Hence not separated, and can be affected
by small group leaders (Friedson on Herbert Blumbet)
➢ Mass as a term is said to have negative connotations.
➢ A “Crowd” (huge number of people) easily manipulated by demagogue, alienated and can be
dangerous in certain situations. Example: docile mass vs. revolting mass people (…)
➢ Mass Communication: it involves the use of print, broadcast, and electronic media to
communicate coded messages to large numbers of people located in various areas scattered all
over the country of the world.
➢ Mass Communication Elements: Language (spoken or print), images (visuals), music,
color, lighting, sound effects, plus a variety of other techniques are used to communicate coded
messages to target audiences to obtain particular effects.
➢ Audiences, Individualism and the Mass Media: as masses and/or as crowds…
individualism as understood in terms of privacy, freedom, and self-independence, but
“excessive individualism” is said to lead to anarchy (chaos) in societies.
➢ Broadcasting vs. Narrowcasting: targeting a large audience (a whole country and more) vs.
targeting a specific segment of an audience (youth only, adults only, specific groups ˂ media
professionals, e.g.˃) with a specific or specialized media content.

What is meant by the Media?

ʻThe Mediaʼ refers to the different channels we use to communicate information in the everyday
world. ʻMediaʼ is the plural of medium (of communication), and the main media are:
• Television • Advertising
• Magazines • Pop Music
• Film • Newspapers
• Radio • Internet

What is Media Studies?

• Media Studies involves the analysis of the images, sounds and text that we experience via the media. It is
the study of individual media texts (such as movies, TV shows, magazines, and websites).
• Media Studies also involves practical work, where you learn the techniques involved for the production
of your own media text. Students can learn how to produce different videos, TV commercials, magazine
advertisements, computer animation, photo-essays and documentary videos.

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• Media is a “learn by doing” subject, and students can compare their own experiences with what the
professionals go through.
• Now, media productions can be done digitally (i.e. using computers, the latest software and equipments).

❖ Who made Media? Talk about “institutions”

❖ How they were made = Process of creating media texts
❖ Why they were made = Purpose behind creating media texts
❖ Who they were made for = Audiences targeted to consume created media texts
❖ What rules were followed when making them = Conventions and genres of media texts

Introduction To Broadcast Media History

• “Broadcast: make widely known”
• The ancient Greeks used alternative methods of transmitting information over long distances:
transmissions of messages involved the tops of hills, and fire by night, plus columns of smoke or large
mirrors by day.
• 19th century: messages started to be transmitted via series of electrical clicks on wires.
• Thus, the telegraph system was born, laying the foundations for the broadcast of the human voice and
other noises.
• The beginning of Radio: Radio is the first “modern” media form, and had a huge impact on the history
of the 20th century. For the first time information could be broadcast, i.e. it could be received by anyone
with the right equipment, without wires.
• Broadcasting, Radio and Television are primary means by which information and entertainment are
delivered to the public in virtually every nation around the world. The term broadcasting refers to the
airborne transmission of electromagnetic audio signals (Radio) or audiovisual signals (Television)
that are readily accessible to a wide population via standard receivers (David Marc in “Broadcasting,
Radio and Television” Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2000®)
• Broadcasting is a “crucial instrument of modern social and political organization” ibid.
• National leaders made and still make strong use of radio and television broadcasting to address their
nations, in whole or in part.
• Because of this mass-reaching capacity and its recognition as significant means of communication,
broadcasting was, is and will continue to be exposed to regulation and deregulation. Ibid.
• The birth of radio started the era of mass communication. 1920s witnessed the explosion in radio
broadcasting likened by many to the wired and wireless explosion in internet mass communication we are
living today.
• The first documented radio transmission occurred in 1895 and was sent by a 21 year old Italian,
Guglielmo Marconi, who did simple experiments using a radio transmitter and receiver, one transmitter
placed at his house, and a receiver placed three miles away.
• In late 1901, Marconi shifted to USA (St John’s Terranova), where he labored to receive the first weak
transatlantic radio signal.
• In 1916, David Sarnoff proposed to Marconi’s U.S. branch, Radio Corporation of America (RCA), later
on, to make the radio a household outlet and thereby launch general public broadcasting.
• 1922: 60,000 US houses had radios;

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• 1929: 10 million radio sets sold in US
• 1930’s: almost 600 radio stations in the United States, turning into a $100 radio industry/business. (…)
• 1940’s: World War II (War news from battlefront from Germany to US to Japan: propaganda, victory,
defeat and surrender).
• 1950’s onwards: radio broadcasting expansion globally, developed & developing countries. (…)

• The Introduction of Television

• Radio’s success on technological, communicational, social, economic and cultural levels did propel
research and development of television as a new means of mass communication and large-scale
business.
• Unlike radio, television, appearing to investors as an enormous business venture, soon was developed
into a new mass broadcasting outlet. Competing dominant communications technologies companies raced
to make a reality.

Static Media And Dynamic Media?

• “A good example of a static medium is the newspaper, with which we start our day every morning. A
newspaper follows a set pattern of printing and typesetting operations and the readers have to wait for
the next day’s edition to read the news.”
• “A website, on the other hand, is a good example of a dynamic medium, but… only when it undergoes
constant updates or changes. These changes are made by an expert in web designing, who used tools
such as HTML and Flash to modify the content on the webpage and to improve the layout. Many
people prefer dynamic media such as the Internet to static media such as newspapers.” What about you?

• Static Web Pages And Dynamic Web Pages:

Static Web Pages are the web pages that show same response to every request that is sent to them,
whereas a dynamic Web Page customizes the responses for every request based on the
information it gets from the cookies about the visitor.

ColdFusion is helpful in creating Dynamic web pages as it is used Macromedia Flex 1.5 technology,
which facilitates rich forms of HTML pages using CFML in order to generate Flash Movies.

Hot Media And Cool Media? (McLuhan’s Theory of Media)

• Hot Media display these characteristics:

1- High definition (“state of being well filled with data”)
2- Much information, low participation & exclusion of audience.
3- Radio, film, photograph, printed word, phonetic alphabet, lecture are examples of hot media.

• Cool Media display these characteristics:

1- Low definition, little information, high participation & inclusion for the audience.
2- Telephone, television, cartoon, speech, hieroglyphics, seminars are examples of cool media.

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 Print And Electronic Media? (McLuhan’s Theory of Media)

• “The medium is the message.” (McLuhan. 1965): i.e. “The media profoundly affect the way we
make sense of the world, so they are much more important…than the texts they carry” (Berger.
1994).
• The Impact of Print Media. Books & news papers for example display these characteristics: the
importance of the eye/seeing/visual; linearity; logic; rationality; individualism; detachment;
separation; etc.
• The Impact of Electronic Media. Radio & television for example display these characteristics:
aurality; all-at-oneness; emotion; simultaneity (instead of separation & linear development);
involvement; connectivity; etc.

Media Functions

• Functions of Mass Media

• The mass media performs many general and specific functions.
• In general, the mass media serves Information, Interpretation, Instructive, Bonding and Diversion
functions.
 Information function: Audiences need information to satisfy their curiosity, reduce uncertainty, better
understand their position locally and internationally, and empower themselves.
• Infoglut: unlike before, nowadays there is a media saturation because of the huge number of information
sources, which sometimes results in misinformation (premature, inaccurate, or partial coverage, ex.) due
to increased competitions.
 Interpretation function: Media outlets inform and sometimes interpret messages for audiences, which
sometimes either enhances or dulls their reception understanding capacities.
• Example: newspapers, television and radio often try to provide explicit interpretations and or
commentaries of on current affairs and events, which maximizes their subjectivity partiality and may
reduce the critical thinking abilities of the audiences.
 Instructive function: Some media outlets function to cultivate audiences thru presenting informative and
instructive programs.
• Major news networks like CNN and BBC are primarily supposed to serve the information function,
which remains questionable eventually.
• Cable news networks like Fox News and MSNBC seem to mix information and interpretation functions.
• The in-depth coverage on Al-Jazeera News Station seems to be informative, interpretive and
instructive.
• The History Channel, the National Geographic Channel and the Discovery Channel seem to fulfill
the instructive functions despite their occasional dramatization of content.
 Bonding function: Mass media outlets are out there to enhance and strengthen social ties between and
help hold them together.
• For example, Moroccans who share common values and interests can gather around interesting Moroccan
TV program.
 Diversion function: The media are supposed to entertain, amuse and distract audiences who need to
relax after hard work.

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 Media Social Functions

Functionalist Approach: According to Denis McQuail (2000) ,a media theorist, media can perform
several social functions.
1- Information: Media as providing a continuous flow of information about our society and the world
at large.
2- Correlation: Media also explains meanings of information and hence helps in establishing social
norms, socializing people and helping in guiding the interpretations of events.
3- Continuity: Media as expressing and also maintaining the dominant culture, mediating social
change in unison with preset agendas, forging mainstream values, etc.
4- Entertainment: Media as reducing social tension/stress, temporarily ridding people of their problems
and conflicts, etc.
5- Mobilization: Media as encouraging people to contribute to the political and economic
development, mobilizing the people in favor of certain causes and interests raised by certain
parties, state and non-state, mobilizing a whole nation in wartime, etc.

What mass media communication can do and can’t do?

1- Difficulty to change basic beliefs (religious faith for example). Do you agree or disagree?
2- Capacity to shape and change momentary (short term) desires and small decisions we make.
3- Mass media should be better approached as “an agent of persuasion” not an “agent of
entertainment and pleasure”. Entertainment was ignored as media content that also should be
studied and analyzed.
4- The play theory perspective: the play factor (entertainment) was ignored by many media
scholars/critics but was rectified by William Stephenson (1967). (To be detailed later).

Play Theory Of Mass Communication

• The media are not simply channels/conduits without a significant role.

• They Play Theory of Mass Communication (William Stephenson, 1967)
• Mass Media Communication should:
1- Provide play (entertainment): “absorption of audiences in subjective play”
2- Influence customs
3- Normalize manners
4- Give people something in common to talk about
5- To foster mutual socialization.
• “Social controls”: “deeply internalized beliefs which are difficult if no impossible to change”
• “Convergent selective conditions”: this simply concerns relatively trivial likes and dislikes of media
content consumers.
• To help shake up society: to be in the forefront of change in status quo conditions (new media
role in the so-called Arab Spring as an example worth discussing).

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 On Media Effects!

• For Stephenson, “mankind…is being painlessly put to sleep by the cunning of advertisers and
purveyors of mass pop culture for the people” (AA. Berger, 1995: 20).
• On Media Effects: media affects tend to exert influence the following elements:
1- Attitudes and opinions
2- Beliefs and values
3- Behaviors and perceptions
4- Choices and preferences
5- Practices and activities (social & cultural)
6- Decisions (individual, collective, daily personal decisions, short-term more than long-term ones
because non-media factors may interfere and affect these long-term decisions).

• Media Effects: Weak or Powerful?

❖ Some argue that: the mass media have powerful effects because they “set our agendas, focus, give
us biased notions about reality” (Berger, 1995: 21) [From Cultivation Theory].
❖ The media “lead to a spiral of silence that dissuades people from voicing opposition to what
they (media) believe are widely accepted views” (Berger, 1995: 21). [Media try to persuade people
not to oppose mainstream views].
❖ Others argue that the media have limited effects.
❖ Lot of research has been done on the topic of media effects but has shown that media do not have a
very big impact on audiences (William J. McGuire (1991) in Berger, 1995).
❖ Existing research findings indicate that media effects may be identified at certain times but they
usually remain quite small in their extension.
❖ Yet, such factors as the weakness of research methods, conditions of doing research, and looking for
general effects not very specific ones might have led to the shortage of enough proofs that media
have powerful effects.
❖ For researchers as Chain Eyal (1994), there is little support for the null or limited effects of
media. The evidence available on the null/limited effects emanates from little research done on the
impact of political campaigns in 1940’s and 1950’s.
❖ Post-1950’s research has indicated that media affect not only behavior but also cognition
(awareness, knowledge, opinions, etc.)
❖ Recognition that the mass media “do have an impact -indeed different types of impact- in specific
areas of people’s thoughts, information processing, and life in general” (A.A. Berger, 1995: 22).
❖ Other mass media scholars: Focus on the uses people make of the media and the gratifications
they get from them.

On Media Effects Theories!

• Socialization theory
• Agenda-setting theory
• Gatekeeping theory
• Cultivation theory
• Reinforcement theory
• Spiral and silence theory
• Cultural imperialism theory

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 Socialization: media are said to play an important role in this process which basically means the
way(s) “by which we learn how to become members of society…to take on various roles, or
patterns of behaviors and conduct, and certain values, attitudes, and beliefs, which are all tied
to…socioeconomic class, race, religion, ethnicity, and …our media usage” (A.A. Berger, 1999, p:
62).

• So, mass media and its ensuing popular culture influence the socialization of media audiences
through agents like rock musicians, sports heroes, cinema/TV actors/actresses, etc. employed in media
products/narratives that give people, especially the youth, “ideas about how to behave, how to dress,
how to relate to others, and what to become” (ibid).

• Hence, a powerful youth culture that uses and used (i.e. affected/shaped) by the media, “a
subculture that has its own media, its own values, its own entertainments…often at odds
with…mainstream society” (ibid. p: 62-63).

 Agenda Setting Theory:

• Agenda setting theorists suggest that “The mass media carry programs that focus our attention on
certain aspects of life (that they deal with in news shows, talk shows, narratives, and …consign other
aspects of life and topics to secondary status or, in some cases, relative obscurity”(Berger, 1999,
p: 63)

• Hence: audiences are said to become concerned only about the aspects, points, affairs, topics, and
items the media have focused on, i.e. they grow more oblivious to what has not been brought to their
attention.

• The media therefore provide a “frame of reference” which means that they implicitly, in some cases
explicitly, tell audiences what to think about and in so doing them “set our agendas and ultimately
shape our decision making on political and social issues” (ibid).

 Gatekeeping Theory:

• Gatekeepers are often referred as “the individuals in media organizations who decide what will be
shown or written”…in newspapers, radio and television news shows… and “determine what the
important news is on a given day and the relative prominence the various stories will receive”
(Berger, 1990).

• Factors affecting the decision making of gatekeepers can be:

1- The media organization they work for.

2- The type of the mass-medium where they work (TV is not radio because of the need for visual
images or footage).
3- Their own socioeconomic status, etc.

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• Selecting certain news and discarding others reflect the subjectivity of the gatekeepers. Hence the
effects of salience on media news content.
• Gatekeepers and agenda-setting are interlinked: “what gatekeepers let through their gates becomes
material that sets our agenda” (Berger, 1999, p: 65)

• Check Point: the news we read or watch is “someone’s view of what is important news or news
that will attract and keep the attention of…audiences – not necessarily what is important news”
in reality or for audiences. “Thus where there are media, there is always a kind of manipulation going
on” (ibid).

 Cultivation Theory:

Television“tends to dominate our ʻsymbolic environmentʼ and that the image of reality found in the
mass media shapes, to a great degree, the conceptions of reality that media consumers have” (George
Gerbner in Berger, 1995, p: 66)
• Television “cultivates or reinforces certain values and beliefs in its viewers…has more or less
usurped the role…played by…parents…” (ibid).
• US. Television/media quite often present a distorted image of things (lots of violence/action,
underrepresentation of women, older people, domination of professional people,
overrepresentation of cops and criminals…)
• Audience reliance on these distorted images of reality “leads to all kinds of misconceptions” and
therefore media studies courses should be developed to “encourage critical viewing as a means of
countering the negative influences of television” (ibid).

 Reinforcement Theory: Research led by sociologists Paul F. Lazarsfeld (1940’s) discovered that
political campaigns have limited impact on the electorate but they basically seem to be “reinforcing
beliefs that people already hold” (ibid).

• Audiences, or segments of them, are supposed here to be selective so far as they read/watch what is
congruent with their belief and values system.

• Group affiliations, personal contact, and opinion leaders are said here to strongly affect especially
elite high status segments of society (Lazarsfeld et al.)

• Hence the two-step flow of media: in a first step, the media influence opinion leaders who in a
second step affect others affiliated to them, especially when it comes to media and elections.

• Voting behaviors of affiliated individuals are supposed to be affected since these people tend to
accept ideas that reinforce their prior beliefs by virtue of group belonging.

• J.W. Riley & M.W. Riley (1959) content that primary groups and reference groups are here said to
exert influence on people belonging to or sympathizing with them, arguing that “mass
communication is a social process that both influence and is influenced by the social
environment” (A.A. Berger as paraphrasing the two researchers).

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 Media Imperialism (Cultural Imperialism) theory

• Marxist and critical communication scholars are behind this theory.

• Its main argument: “Media texts produced in the Western nations have come to dominate media
channels all over the world” in that many of broadcast TV shows run in the Third World countries
are mostly made in US and Western Europe (Berger, 1995)
• Hence “destroy(ing) of native cultures and enculturate people in Third World countries” through
“ideological messages that subtly brainwash Third World peoples into accepting American and
Western European bourgeois capitalist values and beliefs” (ibid)
• Example: Disney and Disney comics are said to spread bourgeois imperialist ideology through the
adventures of Donald Duck and other Disney characters with all their values and worldview loads
(Ariel, Dorfman & Armand Mattelart (1975, 1991) in Burger (1995).

• Hence the “indoctrination effect” assumption which is tied to those comic narratives and characters.

• Example: Disney’s comic-book writers “make use of common stereotypes of various Latin
Americans, and this serves to separate groups from one another, thus making them more susceptible to
indoctrination by the mass media” (ibid).

• However, it should be known that semioticians ,for example, contend that the mass media remains
susceptible to “aberrant decoding” , i.e. individuals/audiences may not be ʻreadingʼ texts in the ways
cultural imperialists think they are” (ibid).

• Do really ideological messages get through to readers and viewers remains a reasonable/tenable
question!

• Hence the idea of “new world information order” and the consequent McBride Report that called
for free access to information, lifting censorship, and limiting commercial influences, all for a
global media equality policy. But, is it really the case?

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 Table of shots and their meanings
Shot Definition Meaning

Close-up Small part of body Intimacy

Extreme close-up Very small part of body Inspection

Medium shot most of Most of body Personal relations

body
Full shot All of body Social relations

Long shot Setting and characters Context, scope

Z-axis Vertical action toward Involvement

viewer

Wipe Image wiped off screen Imposed end

Dissolve Image dissolves into next Weaker ending

one

Table of camera work and their meanings

Camera work Definition Meaning

Pan down Camera looks down on x Power of viewer

Pan up Camera looks up at x Weakness of viewer

Dolly in Camera moves in Observation

Fade in Image appears on screen Beginning

Fade out Image disappears from screen Ending

Cut Switch from image to next Excitement

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