Lecture Notes 9/2/09

Lecture Notes Ch. 1, 2, 3 Pt. 2

Chapter 1
- “Umbrella” Perspective
- Enabling v. Limiting Factors
- hardware is only enabling or limiting
- Motivating v. Inhibiting Factors
- External v. Internal Factors
- Discussion Question (DQ): Think of some examples of these factors affecting technology. Examples: analog coaxial cables transmitting only 100 channels as a limiting factor, ease of use of a new technology as an inhibiting factor.

Chapter 2
- DQ: What is one fact or statistic that really stood out to you in the historical perspective presented in this chapter?
- DQ: How useful did you feel this historical perspective was? Did you like the way the chapter was setup or is there another way it could have been organized that might have worked better?
- DQ: Do you think of yourself as a “super communicator” (p. 34)?

Chapter 3
- The Information Society and Control Revolution
- DQ: The book gives the example of search engines as a control mechanism that was developed to help users more easily access information on the Internet. Can you think of examples of other control mechanisms?
- Diffusion of Innovations and Adoption
- how an innovation is communicated through different channels to members of a social system
- DQ: How would you classify your adoption of new technology? Are you an innovator, early adopter, early majority, late majority or laggard?
- Critical Mass Theory
- DQ: Can you think of any new technologies that have just passed “critical mass?”
- Social Information Processing
- conceptions of media are “in part, subjective and socially constructed”
- DQ: Have you ever been influenced by the people around you or the media in choosing to adopt a new technology?
- Uses and Gratifications
- Media System Dependency Theory
- look at the dependency relationships at different levels of analysis – audience, organizational, media system, society in general
- relationship can be symmetrical or asymmetrical; television audience depends more on network television than the networks depend on an individual viewer
- DQ: Do you agree that viewers are more dependent on the networks than the networks are on the individual viewers? What about the importance placed by the networks on Nielsen ratings? Can they have a network without individual viewers?
- Social Learning/Social Cognitive Theory
- looks at how people learn behaviors by modeling others; symbolic modeling is possible through television and the computer screen
- cognition comes in as people think about the consequences of the behaviors they’re modeling; don’t simply copy the behaviors they’ve seen
- DQ: Can you think of an behaviors you’ve learned by modeling behaviors you’ve seen in the media?
- Economic
- The Theory of the Long Tail
- Hit v. Niche
- DQ: Can you think of examples of long tail approaches to media and business?
- The Principles of Relative Constancy
- DQ: Do you see yourself spending less money as new technologies are introduced?