Mass Media messages

Here's an example of Mass Communication that I encountered this morning while I was in the FVCC campus - an electronic message board in the Arts and Technology Building. Chapter 1 discusses Mass Media ubiquity, meaning we are surrounded by mass media messages in all aspects of our life. Here's a relatively simple assignment: post a response describing an example of when you encountered a mass media message in the last 24 hours, the more unexpected the better. I'd like everyone to post their response by 6 p.m. Thursday. Thoughtful replies to posts by other students will earn extra credit.

Also, the Chapter 1 quiz will become available today at 6 p.m. and remain available until midnight Friday. In a previous post I mentioned that we will deal with the economic issues addressed in your text book when we discuss chapter 3, but there is one question on the quiz regarding advertising revenue, so make sure you've read those pages before you take the quiz. Good luck.

OT: Can your instructor write?

BTW, OT is an abbreviation for "Off Topic," just as BTW is online shorthand for "By the way" and LMAO is short for, well, you know what it stands for.

Anyway, I have a column in the current edition of the Flathead Beacon, which you can find here.

Maybe this isn't entirely OT after all. We should start compiling a list of all text/online short hand. It might be useful in class. OTOH, doing so would take a lot of time.

Chapter 1

Here are some things to consider this week as you read Chapter 1 and review the Powerpoint. You do not need to respond to this post. However, if you have a questions about the material please post a question and I will do my best to answer. There will be a post from me requiring a response from you later in the week.

Think about the distinctions between personal, group and mass communication. Understand that Mass Comm, the focus of this class, is a relatively recent development in human history. What is the human invention, or inventions, that was required to allow Mass Comm to occur? Answer: technology. All forms of Mass Comm involve the use of technology.

Keep in mind the kind audience that content producers attract, and how that is changing over time. In the past everyone watched one of the three network nightly newscasts. Today news producers can target smaller audiences, with say Fox attracting a conservative audience and MSNBC going after a more liberal crowd. This change in the kind of audience targeted is an important concept we will touch on time and time again this semester, and it will be central to your Long Tail paper.

Will old models for Mass Comm providers remain viable in the future? Is there a place for USA Today in the 21st century?

What’s the difference between Mass Comm and Mass Media?

Media Literacy is critical if you are going to interact intelligently and understand the messages provided by the Mass Media? Do you have to understand the messenger to understand the message?

The chapter ends with a discussion about media finances. This is a recent change to the latest edition of the textbook, but is really out of place here (Text book publishers make these pointless changes so students and bookstores have toss all the old editions and make everyone buy the new ones). Read through these pages but I will wait to focus on them in chapter three.

The way forward

OK, hopefully by now you've had a chance to review the syllabus and other course material. You may still be wondering how the course will proceed. Here's what you can expect each week.

On Monday I will post on the chapter we are reviewing that week, with some guidance on what I consider the most important elements of the chapter. That post may or may not include a prompt requiring a response. It may also lead you to some supplemental sources to help you better understand the material covered. Your job will be to respond to the post (if required), read the chapter, review the chapter PowerPoint, and, at the end of the week, take a quiz on the chapter.

During the week I may add posts to supplement the material in the chapter. Again, they may or may not request a response from you. It's your responsibility to read my posts and understand if you need to respond.

A word of warning about the PowerPoints. I once taught this course face-to-face, and I used the PowerPoints for class lectures. I am reviewing them over time and hope to improve them so that they are more user friendly as a student study guide. But I can't say for sure that I will update all of them this semester (It's a big project and I have a couple other jobs that take up some of my time). So bear with me and I will get to as many as I can. If I can't get to one before the week that chapter is assigned, I will leave it as is until the spring semester.

I still haven't heard from some of you. Please post a reply so I know you are out there. If you have any questions, please post them on the blog so that the other students can learn from the discussion. Or, if you just need to clear something up with me, sent me an e-mail.

I hope all is well and you have a safe holiday weekend.

Question about iTunes

I've heard back from four of you so far. We're halfway there. A question: There are some podcasts available through iTunes that would be useful for our class. Is everyone out there up to speed on accessing content through iTunes? These are all free episodes.

Also, if you want a preview of your essay assignment, the Long Tail post on this page is from the spring semester. We will be doing the same thing this fall.

First assignment

Hello class. I hope all is going well in your first week back in school. This week will be all about getting organized and understanding how the course will proceed in future weeks. We'll start with this first, simple assignment: Post a short reply to this post just so I know you're out there and have found your way to this blog.

I will be posting more material in the next two days to help you get ready for next week when the actual work of the course begins.

I hope you all have a productive semester,
Rob

Long Tail essay assignment

This graphic illustrates the Long Tail Effect. The y axis (that's the line the runs up and down) shows how popular a product is, or how great its sales. The x axis (the horizontal line) shows the distribution of sales of all of the products in a category. If we were considering movie ticket sales this weekend, the latest Harry Potter release would be represented by a place on the x axis very near its intersection with the y axis. In other words, Harry Potter ticket sales are in the red area designated as the "Head," as ticket sales for that movie are quite high. Some art house movie only showing on a few screens, primarily in big cities near universities with a concentrated population of pretentious intellectuals would be represented by a point on the x axis far to the right of the Head. Our art house movie, let's call it "Jacques Confronts the Meaninglessness of Existence While Drinking Pinot," would be placed somewhere out on the orange "Long Tail."

Why is this Long Tail important? Consider for a moment a different type of product: music. When I was a young lad in college I worked at a record store, Licorice Pizza (Get it? if you've never seen a vinyl record you might not, but don't get hung up on that distraction). Record stores where the place were everyone purchased their music back in the prehistoric 1980s. Record stores were a great place for distributing music, but they had a significant limitation: space. That limitation meant that we could only carry the best sellers, or records that sold well enough to fall in the Head section of the x axis.

What that meant was that if you were looking for the latest Phil Collins album (he was big back in the day) we had plenty on hand. But if your tastes ran more in the direction of "Echo and the Bunnymen," an arty New Wave act of that era, we might have had a copy stuck in a bin with the latest releases by "Agent Orange," "X" and "Magazine," other New Wave/Punk bands with considerable talent but sales that never climbed beyond the Long Tail into the Head.

But today my 16-year-old daughters have never purchased music in a record store, and have only been in Rockin Rudy's in Missoula a time or two. They purchase all of their music online in iTunes and load it directly on their iPods.

Your assignment is to write a 1,200 word essay examining the Long Tail and its impact on Mass Media. Your essay should answer to the best of your opinion, an opinion formed by research of course, the five questions listed below.

Before you try answering these questions a little research is in order. I'd start here if I were you.

You may also find this helpful.

Your questions:

1 — Music on iTunes is distributed digitally. As the cost of digital storage space (memory) has declined, how has this affected digital music distribution?

2 — Retailers once focused their efforts on the few top products in the Head. What are the implications for profit making when products in the Long Tail can be distributed at virtually no cost?

3 — It you were an independent producer of low volume product, be it music, video or a manuscript, how would you seek to exploit the Long Tail to maximize sales and exposure?

4 — Has the distribution of intellectual property changed permanently, and if so is this good or bad (you may steal some ideas from your Kindle papers for this one)? If we lose the communal space of bookstores and record shops forever have we lost something of value?

5 — Do you expect the forces of the Long Tail to play out for books the way it did for music, or do you expect something different to happen?

Don't kill yourselves with these. Just give me a short graf or two on each that shows me you understand the concept. If you'd feel more comfortable answering one of the questions with five to 10 grafs instead of all five with one or two, that's find as well. Whichever approach is most comfortable for you.

I'll get some review material for our final chapter quizzes out tomorrow.