Internet Mass Media Systems - Essay Example

? Research Proposal number} Introduction Mass media has assumed a major role in how modern life is looked at and construed. The domain of mass media is composed of any forms of media that are intended to reach a large audience. These can include print, broadcast and digital forms that are distributed to large audiences. In addition, the term mass media is also used to refer to the large organisations that are responsible for controlling the contents of mass media such as publishing companies, radio stations, television stations and social networking companies (Potter, 2008). The domain of internet mass media systems has only recently been recognised but it is without a doubt a prolific form of mass media in its own right. While mass media has affected other aspects of modern life, there is little deniability that mass media has had an overwhelming effect on contemporary politics. This is all the more true for nations that pursue the path of democracy since the average citizen is an important part of the democratic structure. The opinion of the ordinary person in a democratic system makes all the difference between success and failure in regards to political issues. It has been argued that the mass media tends to bear an overbearing influence on the modern man in a democratic system so that the democratic process is biased. On the other hand, it has been advocated that mass media outlets only have the power to present people with the issues to think about while people decide on the issues themselves. The American Presidential race for example has come under scrutiny time and again for it being tilted to favour one faction or the other due to overarching mass media influences. These mass media influences are chosen by a handful of mass media organisers who tend to exert sizable influence on the overall political process. This is only possible due to the very nature of the mass media structure that provides limited input exposure to the common man. Mass media gurus and bosses get to choose what is shown and what is not. Arguably, this should tend to subside with the introduction of more free mass media outlets such as the internet. Previous mass media streams whether print, broadcast or digital have been controlled exclusively by the mass media bureaucracy due to the inherent design of the overall process. However, the internet is highly differentiated from all of these mass media streams given that it is as accessible to the common person as it is to mass media gurus. The average person can simply go ahead and publish his views as he sees fit which was not possible under the conventional mass media regime given the limitations on what material to publish. This would also tend to indicate that the mass media in the form of the internet is free from the influence of overarching political structures. Hence, it could be assumed that the internet would serve as a means of liberation for the mass media that has been in the clutches of organisational structures for decades. The recent uprising in the Middle East sponsored by internet mass media especially social networking media has exposed a new dimension to mass media and politics. Mass media has been shown to be linked to political change without any remaining doubts since the Arab domino effect was able to remove three deeply entrenched dictatorial regimes. These regimes namely Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosseni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Kaddafi in Libya had overwhelming control of mass media outlets except for the internet. Throughout the entire conflict, none of these dictators were able to subject the internet mass media machine to their wishes. Consequently, internet mass media was used to disseminate information and to rally support against these political machinations. It could be inferred from these changes that the internet mass media has independence and potential for open and fair change. However, neither before nor after the Arab uprisings was internet mass media able to inflict change in the political process. It remains to be seen why the Arab uprising was able to take onto change due to internet mass media and why such change was not able to go through in instances such as “Occupy Wall Street” although the medium of influence for the masses remained the same. Research Questions A number of issues emerge given the burgeoning power of the internet mass media to incite and fuel political change. This research will attempt to answer a few of these questions including: 1. How does the internet mass media domain fit into contemporary theories of mass media and political control? Are the existing theories enough to explain the influence of the internet mass media or is there a need to develop newer theories? 2. Given that internet mass media has discernible influence on the political process, is the nature of such influence direct or indirect? 3. Internet mass media is more popular in younger adult populations than in older segments of the population. How does this affect the political influence of internet mass media? 4. What chances or strategies for control are available to mass media organisations to control opinions originating from and circulating on the internet? Literature Review For a very long time mass media has been used to hammer ideas into people’s lives and has been used to propagate ideologies. It is popularly held that the mass media regime to influence people’s lives only became visible in the sixties and afterwards but this is not true. The modern form of empirical research on mass media and its effects on people can be dated back to the thirties when Hitler’s Nazi regime and Mussolini’s Fascist regimes were experimenting with mass media as a tool of social control. Both regimes relied in large part on print materials such as newspapers, magazines etc. and radio stations in order to exert influence on their populations. In addition the German cinema was also subjected to governmental control under Joseph Goebbels as another facet of mass media and social control. The results speak for themselves in terms of social control. In a few short years, Nazi Germany was able to captivate the minds of its people to exterminate the Jews from the face of the earth. These views were challenged later in studies on mass media carried out in the forties. The contention that mass media is an effective form of social and political control came under dispute when large scale studies were conducted. These early studies on the matter signified that the use of mass media means such as radio stations and print material seemed to have little effect on people’s voting patterns (Lazarsfeld et al., 1944). It was theorised that the use of mass media only seemed to strengthen the already existing ideas of voters. This was attributed to filtering and selection being utilised for mass media use. Other experimental research delineated that propaganda through the use of films seemed to have little effect in indoctrinating certain values in people (Howland et al., 1949). In response to the researches outlined above, novel theories of media control came into being. These theories relied on disseminating information to masses that did not conflict with their previous systems of beliefs in regards to issues. The domain of agenda setting theories encompassed the belief that providing mass media coverage to certain issues tends to make these issues important in people’s eyes (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). In contrast the priming approach delineates that people tend to evaluate politicians through the lens of issues that are covered by the mass media (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987). It must be taken into account that both of these models are derived from memory based models. The basic assumption for both models is that people tend to form opinions based on issues that are the most accessible to them and that media coverage tends to improve accessibility of certain issues over others. Cohen (1963) summarised this situation by expounding that while the media cannot tell the masses what to think but the media has the power to decide what the masses think about. These ideas are complemented by the framing theory that insists that the characterisation of an issue by the mass media tends to influence how the issue is understood by the masses. A typical example can be a rally conducted by a political group. The mass media may choose to represent the issue from the perspective of free speech or from the perspective of public safety. In either instance, the overall public reaction will be created depending on how the media tends to portray the issue. It could be argued that the existing theories of mass media control tend to provide some explanation for internet mass media and its political influence but certain gaps still exist. On another note, the democratising influence of the internet has been called to cause and has been labelled as being vulnerable (Blumler & Gurevitch, 2000). It has been argued that the internet and its mass media capability have a far greater economic potential than a political potential. Furthermore, the political capabilities of internet mass media have been viewed as nothing more than circumstantial (Habermas, 2006). This tends to indicate that the mass media potential of the internet has been recognised although its economic side has been stoked more than its political sides. It could also be argued that the potential of internet mass media for political change needed a watershed event to express its scale and scope. The Arab uprising could be taken as one of these watershed events that delineates the true political potential of the internet. However, there is only scant research on the issue as yet since the Arab uprising was a very recent event. The existing research is more or less in a jumble as yet with some quarters advocating the political potential of the internet while other quarters are decrying the political potential of the internet. In any case there is still a need for further research into the issue before a final word could be delivered. The presence of online mass media organisations in the cyber domain is undeniable. Till only a decade ago the internet was not considered as a serious venue or stream to disseminate mass media information by print publications. However, in recent years a number of print publications have decided to cancel out their printing operations in favour of an all digital online media stream. This approach indicates that there is a significant move towards abandoning certain older mass media streams in favour of the internet so its power as a mass media stream cannot be denied anymore. However, the early adoption of the internet as a mass media stream by larger organisations and mass media outlets means that their influence in the cyber domain cannot be discounted anymore. The amount of influence of these mass media outlets is only beginning to take shape and eventually statistics such as online traffic and clicks will determine if the larger organisations exert more influence or if individual internet users exert greater influence. Again, there is a need to look into the situation in more detail so as to qualify the future of these trends. Methodologies A large number of studies that focus on the relationship between mass media and the masses tend to utilise surveys as well as laboratory experiments. The relative permeation of other interdisciplinary approaches to mass media and its effect on the masses has meant that the relationship has become complex over time. In order to decipher the relationship between mass media and political influence with special regards to the internet, a two prong research approach will be used. Relevant literature over the issue will be explored first followed by a survey of people involved in the mass media streams. The research methods are outlined in detail below. Secondary Techniques The secondary research will depend on searching through relevant literature from a number of different books, journal articles, periodicals and other such published sources. The contention would be to perform keyword searches using a host of basic words such as “internet mass media”, “mass media politics”, “internet mass media politics”, “Arab uprising”, “political change internet”, “mass media political change”, “role of internet in political change”, “internet democracy”, “democracy politics internet” and a combination of these terms. The basic idea is to extract all relevant literature for sorting as per its relevance to the required issues. Once the relevant literature has been extracted, it will be ranked for relevance using the ideas presented in the literature. Attempts will be made to review literature from the post 1990 era to the present day since older literature will not accommodate the more recent phenomenon. Primary Techniques The primacy research will be carried out using findings from the secondary research. The contention behind the primary research will be to gauge people’s reactions as to the influence of mass media in their lives especially with respect to political change. This will be carried into mass media outlets through surveys conducted with the industry’s organisers such as managers, editors and the like. The contention here would be to see the influence of mass media bosses in controlling the overall political side of internet mass media including any upcoming strategies and techniques. Timeline The total research will be carried out over a period of six months such that the secondary research will be executed first followed by the primary research. The secondary research phase will be given some two months including compiling, reviewing and reporting on the current literature. This will be followed by primary research that will include creation and distribution of the surveys to the involved parties. This process is expected to consume around one month after which the distributed surveys will be recollected. The data extracted from these surveys will be processed for statistical inferences over a period of two months. The vital statistics for this data will be used to perform single and multiple variable regressions. This will be used to create statistical models that might be compared to existing literature if such models exist in current literature. The results will then be tabulated and a final report would be created in the last month to juxtapose secondary and primary research findings. Costs The entire research project is expected to cost around five thousand dollars including secondary and primary research as well as compilation costs for the findings. References Blumler, J.G. & Gurevitch, M., 2000. Rethinking the study of political communication. In J. Curran & M. Gurevitch, eds. Mass Media and Society. 3rd ed. London: Arnold. pp.155-72. Cohen, B.C., 1963. The Press and Foreign Policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Habermas, J., 2006. Civil society, cosmopolitics and the net: The legacy of 15 February 2003. Information Communication & Society, 9(2), pp.225-43. Howland, C.I., Lumsdaine, A.A. & She?led, F.D., 1949. Experiments in Mass Communication. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Iyengar, S. & Kinder, D.R., 1987. News that Matter. London: University of Chicago Press. Lazarsfeld, P.F., Berelson, B. & Gaudet, H., 1944. The People’s Choice: how the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign. New York: Columbia University Press. McCombs, M.E. & Shaw, D.L., 1972. The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media. Public Opinion Quaterly, 36(2), pp.176-87. Potter, W.J., 2008. Arguing for a General Framework for Mass Media Scholarship. London: Sage Publications. Read More