Siow Yuen Ching

[email protected]
Block C Level 9

Discovering Mass
Communication
• Module introduction
• Overview of communication
Housekeeping
 Attendance and other expectations
 Module Introduction
 Assessments
 In-class Tutorials and Blended Learning Tutorials
 TIMeS
 Textbook
 Other matters
Attendance and other expectations
 CLASS ATTENDANCE – compulsory
 4x absent – first warning
 6x absent – second warning
 8x absent – third warning
 May be barred from taking final exams
Attendance and other expectations
 PUNCTUALITY / DEADLINES
 Classes
 Assignments
 Assessments:
(%)
1. Assignment 1 (Pair) 20

2. Assignment 2 (Group) 30

ASSESSMENTS 3. Online Quizzes (Individual) 20

 
4. Final Exam 30

 Total 100
 
Important Information
 You MUST have access to TIMeS at all times (please
download the TIMeS mobile app to your mobile phone)
 You MUST check your TIMeS before each tutorial class.
 Tutorials sessions can include:
 normal in-class tutorial activities (most often),
 online quizzes
 self-directed blended learning activity (this means no physical tutorial
class for that week). Attendance?
 consultations for assignments
 You are ENCOURAGED to BYOD for each tutorial. Many
weeks of tutorial work involve online research and
postings.
COM30805 Discovering Mass
Communication
Course Objective:

This course provides students with an overview of the

mass media communication landscape, specifically the
institutions and key elements which affect the role,
products and development of the mass communication
media – such as politics, ownership, audiences,
economics and technology. The course will also introduce
students to various fields within mass communications.
Definition – What is Communication?
Definition – What is Communication?
 Transmission of a message (idea, thoughts,
emotions) from a source to a receiver.
 One-way communication resulting in an
effect/response (Harold Lasswell, 1948).
 The Shannon-Weaver model:
a more complete model of the communication process

First developed by Claude Shannon in 1947, later popularized in the book The
Mathematical Theory of Communication (1963) which he co-authored with
Warren Weaver.
Communication is …
… the process of sending and
receiving a message (idea,
thoughts, emotions) with another
person (or many persons) through a
medium/channel.
The 8 Elements of the Communication
Process
 Transmitting the Message
 Source: the initiator of a thought or idea who starts
the process.
 Encoding: the activities that a source goes through to
translate thoughts and ideas in a perceivable form.
 Message: the actual physical product that the source
encodes.
 Channels: the ways the message travels to the
receiver.
The 8 Elements of the Communication
Process
 Receiving the Message
 Decoding: consists of activities that translate or interpret
physical messages.
 Receiver: the target of the message
 Feedback: responses of the receiver that shape/alter the
subsequent messages of the source.
 Noise: interference of message delivery
 Physical / Environmental
 Semantic
 Technological
What is “noise”?
 Noise – leading to communication interference
 Physical / Environmental noise
 Things that distort the reception of the message.

 Semantic noise
 Confusion caused by using words or phrases that the audience
cannot understand or might misinterpret.

 Which is which?
STATIC, LOUD BACKGROUND MUSIC, SMALL FONT, POOR
COLOUR CHOICE, JARGON, TECHNICAL DETAILS, POOR
GRAMMAR, MISPELLINGS
 Technological noise

 When the device

you are using
inadvertently
changes the
message you want
to send
(examples:
autocorrect
functions,
incorrect use of
emojis, truncated
messages)
Communication Settings
Intrapersonal Communication

Communication with
oneself
takes place within a single person,
often for the purpose of clarifying
ideas, analyzing a situation or to
understand/be self-aware of one’s
emotions, values, attitudes and
beliefs.
Interpersonal Communication
Individual or group
communication (without the
aid of a mechanical device)
• Physical presence required
• Variety of channels are available
for use
• Messages hard for receiver to
terminate
• Private or public
• Immediate feedback
• Noise?
Machine-Assisted Interpersonal
Communication
So, what is mass
communication?
Mass Communication
 Occurs when a complex organisation, with
machine aid, produces and transmits public
messages to large, heterogeneous, scattered
audiences. (Dominick 2010, p.10)
 The technology-assisted transmission of messages
to mass audience. (Vivian 2013, pp.4 & 5)
 Sharing ideas across a large audience either at a
given point or through an extended time frame
(Folkerts & Lacy 2001, p. 27)
Mass Communication
Source
 Pre-Internet: Source was typically a group of individuals
who acted in predetermined roles in an organizational
structure (eg. the product of a group’s effort, Oprah
Winfrey’s talk show, conferences, seminars)

 Internet: Source can be one person, who becomes a mass

communicator (eg. a blogger to his readers, an
organisation’s FB page to their customers/fans)
Mass Communication
 Encoding/ sending
 Involves many stages
 More than one machine is sending message; eg.
satellite-tv, printing machine
 Decoding/ Receiving
 Message is public
 Multiple decoding stages; eg. tv decodes sight &
sound waves
Mass Communication
 Receiver
 Large audience & anonymous to each other
 Self-defined audience (choose to consume media)
 Heterogeneous
 Spread over a wide geographic area
 Feedback
 Delayed/ immediate
 Noise
 Schramm’s Model of Mass
Communication
Organisation owns TV,
newspapers & radio entities.

Eg. TV executives obtaining ratings a week

after a TV program was aired and they
must infer what to do next.

Source: From The Process and Effects of Mass Communication. Copyright (c) 1954
Purpose of Mass Communication
 Why do you want to go to the cinema to watch
movies?
 Why would anyone want to read a novel?
 Why should we tune in to news about Malaysia?
Put yourselves in the shoes of a CEO, a foreign
tourist, a parent of a young kid and a college
student.
Purpose of Mass Communication
3Basic Functions of Mass Media (Harold
Lasswell, communication researcher)

 Surveillance of the environment (report what is

happening around us)
 Correlation of the parts of society in responding to
that environment (explaining to various publics what
the news and information being transmitted means to
them)
 Transmission of culture (from one generation to the
next)
Why people use mass media?
 Generally, media scholars agree that there are four
categories of purpose as to why mass
communication exist:
 To inform the masses
 To persuade the masses
 To amuse the masses
 To enlighten the masses
Purpose of mass communication
Purpose of mass communication
Purpose of mass communication
Purpose of mass communication

People turn to the media for

amusement and entertainment.
In summary…
 People talk with one another with purpose, and also
listen with purpose.
 Sometimes it is to be informed, sometimes to be
amused, other times open to persuasion or
enlightenment.
 Such is no less true in mass communication.
 Mass communicators have purpose – or why bother
doing it at all…
 Remember, media literacy also involves the
understanding of the purpose of a mass message as
part of assessing and analysing the content.
Announcements
 Pleaseensure that your TIMeS access is in
working order
 We meet for lecture and tutorial next week.
Readings
 Hanson, R.E. (2016) Mass Communication: Living
in a Media World (6th ed.) California: SAGE
Publications.
 Chapter 1

 Vivian,J. (2016) The Media of Mass

Communication (12th ed.) Boston: Pearson.
 Chapter 1
Announcements
 Ifin doubt, email me:
[email protected]