Research & Reasoning - Chapter 2 Mass Communication theory

Research & Reasoning - Chapter 2 Mass Communication theory

Based on the prologue of the essay a preliminary body of research was gathered before starting to write and inform arguments based around my essay question, doing this allowed me to gather a thorough body of research to extract the strongest quotes from to inform my own writing, include drop quotes, paraphrasing and to inform further reading and influence in the future for my extended practice. A color coding system helps me quickly extract what quotes are needed for what purpose in the essay so it allows me to maintain a consistent and good flow when writing my dissertation. 

Key

Orange informs my own writing. 

Blue for potential drop quotes and paraphrasing.

Black will inform further investigations into my extended practice module. 

Red is a rationale and reasoning of the quote.

2 - Mass communication theory.

·      Defining mass communication theory.

·      How information is digested. (Interaction with electronic and physical books and other things that communicate text)

·      Technologies and limitations through progression. Weigh benefits and disadvantages up. TV, Phone, Technologies that don’t link direct to type.

·      Predictions of new technologies, “based on research it could be suggested”­

McQuail, D. (2010). McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory. 6^th Edition. Cornwall Great Britain. SAGE Publications Ltd.

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P4.

The term ‘mass communication’ was coined, along with that of ‘mass media’, early in the twentieth century to describe what was then a new social phenomenon and a key feature of the emerging modern world that was being built on the foundations of industrialism and popular democracy. It was an age of migration into cities and across frontiers and also of struggle between forces of change and repression and of conflict between empires and nation states. The mass media (a plural form) refer to the organized means of communicating openly, at a distance, and to many in a short space of time. They were born into the context and conflicts of this age of transition and have continued to be deeply implicated in the trends and changes of society and culture, as experiences at the personal level as well as that of society and the ‘world system’.

The early mass media (newspapers, magazines, phonogram, cinema and radio) developed rapidly to reach formats that are still recognizable today, with changes mainly of scale and diversification as well as the addition of television in the mid-twentieth century. Similarly, what were regarded as the key features of mass communication seventy or more years ago are still foremost in our minds today: their capacity to reach the entire population rapidly and with much the same information, opinions and entertainment; the presumed relation to sources of power in society; the assumption of great influence. There are, of course, many and continuing changes in the spectrum of available media and in many aspects of their content and form, and one purpose of this book is to chart and asses these changes.

The future of Mass communication

P540

The concept of mass communication was first coined during the 1920s or 1930s to apply to the new possibilities for public communication arising from mass press, radio and film. These media enlarged the potential audience beyond the literate minority.

The early meaning of ‘mass communication’ and one that still lingers, derived much more from the notion of people as a ‘mass’ and from the perceived characteristics of the mass media than from any idea of communication.

P544.

·      The power of the communicator to persuade or inform selectively is much reduced by the inability to reach large, captive audiences and by the ready availability of alternative sources of ideas and knowledge.

·      Individuals are no longer restricted by their immediate social group and environment and by the physical availability of a few media channels, controlled by authorities and other agencies. They can enter and belong to new groups and communities across space.

·      There is no longer any unitary ‘message system’ to which people are routinely and consistently exposed, leading to stereotypes and the adoption of consensual values.

·      Individuals can ‘answer back’ to figures of authority or remove themselves from contact. They can also participate actively in informational and opinion exchanges in the context of important social and political issues.

P552.

Glossary

Communication. The term has many different meaning and definitions, but the central idea is of a process of increased commonality or sharing between participants, on the basis of sending and receiving ‘messages’. Theoretical disagreement exists about where we should count as communication the transmission of expression of some message, on its own, without evidence of reception or effect or completion of a sequence. The most important dimensions of communication concern two points: the degree of response or feedback (one-way versus interactive process): and the degree to which a communication relationship is also a social relationship. In general, modern technologies increase the possibility and likelihood of detaching communication (message transmission or exchange) from any social basis.

Computer-mediated communication (CMC). Any communicative transaction that takes place by the way of a computer, whether online or offline, but especially the form. Characteristics include: interactivity in situations where the participants are not physically together; and possibility for anonymity and concealment while communicating. CMC can transgress the social and physical boundaries that normally limit our potential for communicating with others. Not all CMC features are beneficial. We are more exposed to unwanted communication from others. Computer meditation reduces the personal character of the experience, and the commonality or community achieved in cyberspace may be illusory. Communication mediated by computers connected to networks is also more open to various forms of surveillance.

P560.

Internet. The worldwide system of interconnected networks, using the telecommunications infrastructure, that now supports a large number of types of computer-based communication exchanges, including consultation of databases, websites and homepages, conversational interactions, e-mail, many kinds of electronic commerce and financial transactions. The internet is gradually taking over many functions of “traditional” mass media (e.g. advertising, news and information). Access to the Internet is still restricted by costs to the user; plus barriers of language, culture and computer literacy.

Triggs, T. (2003). The Typographic Experiment: Radical Innovation in Contemporary Type Design. 1^st Edition. China. Thames & Hudson.

P7-8.

The Typographic Experiment: From Futurism to Fuse

Typographic Language

The idea of experimental type design and experimental typography is explored here from the inception of an idea, through the research process and into a ‘commercial application’. As two distinct disciplines, experimental type design deals with design or production of typefaces, while experimental typography investigates the use of type in layouts. Type is the ‘symbolic’ representation of language in its mechanical (or digital) form. Type design is not only about the way in which individual letterforms are constructed; it also involves the systematic application of these elements across a set of characters. Conversely, the typographic layout structures the characters – into words, lines and ultimately texts – to produce meaning in the way they are organized visually. The way the typographer presents the ‘page’ takes into account content and form, the materials, the way the page is produced and knowledge of the target audience.

P10-12.

Western traditions in writing and the development of language itself have been questioned throughout the twentieth century. Dadaist Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) argued that one of the principles of the new typography should be to ‘do it in a way that no one has ever done it before’. His interest in the interaction of signs and sounds (optophonetics), for example, resulted in a typeface in which the weights of the vowels were heavier than the other characters.

(Link with how typography was a development of the spoken word into a visual system)

P12.

Herbert Bayer (1900-85), who taught at the Bauhaus, experiments with similar ideas and designed phonetic symbols for syllables in 1959, where ligatures stood for sounds created by the combination of letterforms. He wanted to produced a computer face that reflected ‘his rules for a new orthography’ to ‘eliminate all discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation’ in Western phonetic alphabets. In the 1990s, Tobias Frere-Jones took this one step further for Fuse 15: Cities (1999) by recording peoples conversations as he passed through the streets of Boston. These texts formed the basis of a typeface called Microphone is the language of the street, reflecting how people talk to each other. It also considers new ways of telling stories in which the font becomes the structural framework.

P12.

Typography and its Swiss roots.

The introduction of new technologies has long been an initiator of typographic experimentation. In the late 1960s, Swiss designer and educate Wolfgang Weigarts choice of tools for ‘making by doing’ were more suited to the technology available at the time – hand composed lead type, hand-printing letterpress, wood letters and transparent films. The consequences of combining these media created a new typography and visual aesthetic that has since influenced many contemporary designers and typographers who are engaging with computer technology.

P16

The ration of signal to noise was arguably diminishing. Typographic forms were transformed into abstract shapes, similar to the old demotic hieroglyphs of the Egyptians, which became ‘progressively abstract’ and less skillfully made as they moved from targeting an elite audience into ‘written communication for popular activities’. The new demotic typography redefined punctuation, substituting conventional marks (dots, commas, dashes) with ‘idiosyncratic devices’ (arrows, backward letters, diagrams, boxed words). Butlers critique of early 1990s experimental typography focused on computer technology, which she suggests facilitated a formless, series of pages containing a ‘mix of old and new letterforms, type and script, changing letter direction, overprinted images, changes of scale and ambiguous syntax. The visual complexity of the typographic page had been defined by a decade of typographic experimentation.

P21

Typography and Technology

In 1964, cultural philosopher Marshall McLuhan (1911-80), coined the phrase ‘the medium is the message’. He proclaimed ‘technology was an extension of our senses’ and with each new medium we encountered new ways of experiencing perceptual transformations. For McLuhan, it was the form of electronic media – which he categorized as ‘hot media’ (radio, photography, cinema) and ‘cool media’ (telephones, cartoons, television) – that triggered the rapid speed at which information was produced and consumed. His theories foreshadowed the impact late-twentieth-century communication technology has had (the Internet and World Wide Web). As McLuhan suggested, we have moved from a mechanical age into an electronic age. 

(Link technology to our sense as in speech and how this relates to typography been a technology that places speech into a visual system)

P24-25

Designers sought to name their ‘self conscious explorations of language and designs’, adopting the theoretical position of deconstruction as espoused by philosopher Jacques Derrida in De la grammatologie (Of Grammatology 1967). Already applied to literary and architectural criticism, Deconstrucon has never been fully realized as a theoretical construct for design, although it has presented designers with a new way of thinking about verbal content and visual form. Jorge Glusberg writes, ‘Producers and consumers of texts (cultural objects) thus intervene to play a part in the elaboration of significance and meaning. Designers and curator Ellen Lupton writes ‘A study of typography and writing informed by Deconstruction would examine structures that dramatize the intrusion of visual form into verbal content, the invasion of ideas by graphic marks, gaps and differences.’ Visually, Deconstruction is usually defined by ‘a style featuring fragmented shapes, extreme angles, and aggressively asymmetrical arrangements’. She argues, however that for her, Deconstruction is a ‘process – an act of questioning’

But where has this led us to today? The convention of reading in terms of legibility and readability, have been questioned in the construction of letterforms and their place in the typographic layout. Once accepted formulaic and simplistic typographic structures have been re-examined in light of the complexities offered by a new information age and new systems of writing.

(Digestion of information and how type has reacted)

Hamis Muir

P33

Formal “information-based” problems require an analysis of underlying information structures and hierarchies through which forms of typographic expression are suggested and then modulated visually to an appropriate level during the design development and in the finished piece. Typographic systems, with rules and logic.

Lucinda Hitchcock

P151

Typography is the design, choice and arrangement of typeset matter, and is shaped by conventions that aim to create legible and accessible reading material. Experimental typography challenges the notion that legibility and the message are primary, rather asking that the maker/user/viewer consider other characteristics that are inherent to type. Like many conventions, typography is old and revered. Like paint, it can be used to show something akin to the truth, or it can be asked merely to suggest. It can be dressed up or down. Typography is nothing without meaning, and meaning is nothing without questioning. And to experiment is not to seek an answer but to serve the question.

P177

Typefaces based on Renaissance, nineteenth-century grotesque, or twentieth-century Modernist models – all of which may have been considered experimental initially, but have become canonical with widespread use (though unexpected permutations or juxtapositions of these types can be experimental)

(How typography was an experiment in itself for the benefit of communication)

Mcluhan, E & Zingrone, F (1995). Essential McLuhan. Ontario : House of Anansi Press.

Chapter 5 – Letter to Harold Adam Innis

p72-73

Mallarmé saw the modern press as a magical institution born of technology. The discontinuous juxtaposition of unrelated items made necessary by the influx of news stories from every quarter of the world, created, he saw, a symbolic landscape of great power and importance. (He used the world “symbol” in the strict Greek sense sym-ballein, to pitch together, physically and musically). He saw at once that the modern press was not a rational form but a magical one so far as communication was concerned. Its very technological form was bound to be efficacious far beyond any informative purpose.

p73-74

The hypertrophy of letter-press, at once the cause and effect of universal literacy, has produced a spectacular decline of attention to the printed or written word. As you have shown in Empire and Communications, ages of literature have been few and brief in human history.

p74.

The comic book for example has been seen as a degenerate literary form instead of as a nascent pictorial and dramatic form which has sprung from the new stress on visual-auditory communication in the magazines, the radio and television. The young today cannot follow narrative but they are alert to drama. They cannot bear description but they love landscape and action.

Print and Electric revolution

p90.

Students of computer programming have had to learn how to approach all knowledge structurally. In order to transfer any kind of knowledge to tapes it is necessary to understand the form of the knowledge.

(Relationship between how typography was a structured output for lettering and placing spoken words into a visual language with more electronic & digital languages that communicate information through different mediums)

p92.

“The Greeks took over the alphabet and made it a flexible instrument suited to the demands of a flexible oral tradition by the creation of words.” The alphabet is a technology of visual fragmentation and specialism, and it let the Greeks quickly to the discovery of classifiable data.

(Link with above quote describing how alphabet is a technology in itself, could change the definition of technology? Technology is something innovative and more mathematical, not scientific)

p94.

The disastrous effect of the monopoly of communication based on the eye hastened the development of a competitive type of communication based on the eye hastened the development of a competitive type of communication based on the ear, in the radio and in the linking of sound to the cinema and to television. Printed material gave way in effectiveness to the broadcast and to the loud speaker.

p95.

Walter Bagehot opinions

I have gone into some detail in my description of the role and function communication because it is so obviously fundamental to the social process, and because extensions and improvements which the physical sciences have made to the means of communications are so vital to the existence of society and particularly to that more rationally organized form of society we call civilization.

Chapter 9 – Understanding Media

Media is the message

p149.

After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the western world is imploding. During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man – the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our sense and our nerves by the various media.

In the mechanical age now receding, many actions could be taken without too much concern. Slow movement insured that the reactions were delayed for considerable periods of time. Today the action and the reaction occur almost at the same time.

p150.

Western man acquired from the technology of literacy the power to act without reacting. The advantages of fragmenting himself in this way are seen in the case of the surgeon who would be quite helpless if he were to become humanly involved in his operation. 

In the electric age, when out central nervous system is technologically extended to involve us in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we necessarily participate, in depth, in the consequences of our every action.

The restructuring of human work and association was shaped by the technique of fragmentation that is the essence of machine technology. The essence of automation technology is the opposite. It is integral and decentralist in depth, just as the machine was fragmentary, centralist, and superficial in its patterning of human relationships.

p154.

General Sarnoff went on to explain his attitude to the technology of print, saying that it was true that print caused much trash to circulate, but it had also disseminated the Bible and the thoughts of seers and philosophers. It has never occurred to General Sarnoff that any technology could do anything but add itself on to what we already are.

(Value is dependent on the application, context and use’s of the process)

p156.

De Tocqueville’s contrast between England and America is clearly based on the fact of typography and of print culture creating uniformity and continuity. England, he says, has rejected this principle and clung to the dynamic or oral common-law tradition. Hence the discontinuity and unpredictable quality of English culture. The grammar of print cannot help to construe the message of oral and nonwritten culture and institutions. The English aristocracy was properly classified as barbarian by Mathew Arnold because its power and status had nothing to do with literacy or the cultural forms of typography.

p170.

As W.B. Yeats wrote of this reversal, “The visible world is no longer a reality and the unseen world is no longer a dream.” Associated with this transformation of the real world into science fiction is the reversal now proceeding apace, by which the Western world is going Eastern, even as the East goes Wester.

p173.

One of the most common causes of breaks in any system is the cross-fertilization with another system, such as happened to print with the steam press, or with radio and movies.

(Different types of communication, this contrast of radio and print been the distribution of type and language from visual to spoken relates back to the introduction of typography been an aid for placing spoken language into an organized system, the idea of movies is an expansion on how information and such can be communicated visually, like typography is a visual system)

p199

The new art or science which the electronic or post-mechanical age has to invent concerns the alchemy of social change.

Two hundred years ago it was idea and theory which distributed the old regimes. Now it is just the packaged information, which we call entertainment which transforms living conditions and basic attitudes. It is the ordinary flow of news and pictures from every quarter of the globe which rearranged our intellectual and emotional lives without either struggle or acceptance on our part.

p210-211.

Counterblast Manifesto 1954

The handwriting is on the celluloid walls of Hollywood; the Age of Writing has passed. We must invent a NEW METAPHOR, restructure our thoughts and feelings. The new media are not bridges between man and nature: they are nature.

Gutenberg made all history SIMULTANEOUS: the transportable book brought the world of the dead into the space of the gentleman’s library; the telegraph brought the entire world of the living to the workman’s breakfast table.

NOBODY yet knows the language inherent in the new technological culture; we are all deaf-blind mutes in terms of the new situation. Our most impressive words and thoughts betray us by referring to the previously existent, not to the present.

We begin again to structure the primordial feelings and emotions from which 3000 years of literacy divorced us.

p231.

The future of language as a complex structure which can be learned without learning the words at all, is a possibility that the computer presents increasingly.

p232.

The future of language presents the possibility of a world without words, a wordless, intuitive world, like a technological extension of the action of consciousness. 

Openshaw, J. (2015). Touched Screens. Elephant. Issue 23. P184.

Its easy to get tangled up in technology when discussing ‘Post-Internet’ creativity. The term itself invokes ideas of screens, servers, clouds and bots, and perhaps overshadows the human agents and physical infrastructures caught up in this sticky web. It hints at things happening online, and so contains the impossibility of something ever being offline: as if the ‘virtual’ is opposed to the ‘real’, or the physical or the digital.

The average person in the UK spends upwards of nine hours a day looking at screens, while the web now absorbs around half of our waking attention.

We approach our physical environment with new expectations of malleable form, responsive surfaces and connected behaviour. The rise of technological production processes such as 3D printing and generative design only accelerates the process of slippage and cross contamination between digital and physical forms.

Davis, M (2012). Graphic Design in Context - Graphic Design Theory. London: Thames & Hudson.

Graphic design is communication, revolve and triangulate points around these investigations.

Communications model – Chapter 1

p15.

In 1945 Claude Shannon, a research scientist for the Bell Telephone Company, tried to optimize the process for transmitting an electrical signal with minimum distortion. His “Mathematical Theory of Communication” described message transmission in terms of a signal source, or sender, which transmitted information along a channel to a receiver. The signal passed through various types of interface, resulting in some degree of information loss.

(Advancement of how the spoken word can be distributed to wider audience through technology)

p21.

David Berlo

Berlo explains that the message has content – subject matter that is the topic of communication. The message takes physical form through elements: Text, headlines, illustrations, photographs, graphic marks and symbols. These are the tangible forms from which the message is composed and about which the designer makes choices.

(Essence of visual communication)