Work Day

worked on group projects

Persuasion

Dr. Woodard has an upper respiratory sickness so she spoke softly...noticed that less than 1/2 the class was here, so we had a quiz.

Persuasion

What are our favorite commercials
 ex. Doritos, ESPN, Alstate Mayhem, 
What made them resinate? Humor
Humor is hard. 

What makes you remember?
emotional connection, appealing? something that resinates with you

Hardee's Memphis burger commercial
Teacher: "I'm not the target audience..You guys who are all smiling are the target audience"

Movies
product placement

What surprised you about "The Persuaders"

"If it doesn't resinate with the audience, you're worthless"

Some terms
Attention the  amt of mental effort that an individual invests to consider an idea or object

persuasive communicatoin is used to sell:
advertisiers - producers

Communication Campaigns:
designed to persuaded people to do something in response to a specific message
- usually targeted towards a particular segment of the media audience
- message needs to be placed where the targeted audience will see, read, hear or used varied media
- message must be presented frequently enough and contain information that will ultimately produce desired ###

Song (Airlines)
Used Demographic and psychographic information to create "Carrie"
What's wrong? "Very Narrow" "Their targeting a vacationer..not someone who can carry an airline." "Their target market wasn't gonna fly (enough)"

Ads that connect with the Spirit
- Family "were your seatbelt" commercial

Humor
- DORITOS!!
- E-Trade Baby

Ads that cause cognitive dissonance avoidance reaction
- Texting and driving. "Yeah"
"Click" I don't want to see their pain.

How do you get t he audience to change?
- ###
- Know them, analyze them culturally, economically, socially
Cognitive dissonance can work up to a point to where they'll start/quit the behavior.

Central & peripheral route to attitude  change
source people who present the message - use expert or attractive sources
message what kind of message, humorous - sad
recipient - men women children channel - newspapers, billboards, internet, etc.

Secrets to Success
- Repeat the message
- Be clear with the message and simple
- How is the message framed?
- Induce the people to persuade themselves.

===
[man these notes are hard to take without my glasses]

Framing
###

Don't discout the audience
###
The more you understand your audience, the better you will be able to frame the story the way that will resinate with the audience

Media Scripts
+ Episodes are almost engrained to where they think the themes are reality. "It's a scary world out there"

Media and advertising frames




** Persuasion Exercise handed out in class **
storyboard
where would the see this message?

No Class Today

Hello: I am ill and have lost my voice. So I cannot lecture you. I know that you are very sad about this -- so am I. So read chapter 6 -- it will make us all feel better. I'll see you next Tuesday. You can also take this day to work on your Assault assignment if you haven't finished.

Dr. W

In Class Handout

** Read Framing Chapter (5) for Thursday**

She previewed our next assignment, group


In-Class Handout  < Turn in to dropbox
- Find Images
- Make it readable
- Headlines & Subheads
less than 500 words

The Persuaders

**Read Persuasion Chapter in Book**

Watched "The Persuaders" in class, a PBS special?

Frontline Special with Douglas R.

"You cannot walk down the street without being bombarded [by advertising]"

Making Clutter? "Break through the clutter"

Consumers Develop immunities (like sprayed bugs)

Investigate: Song
an airline marketing plan, shaped a new brand for their old company (Delta?)
Song did focus groups and found a need for "Carrie"
"We want to create a movement"
Their ad campaign did not carry the message that connected to the audience brought by Spade.




Advertising when from what a product "DID" to what a product "MEANT"

"Polaroid isn't a camera...It's a social lubricant."

Nike: What pushes a person from a mere fan to a follower.
people "need to belong, and make meaning"
Psudo-Spiritual Advertising

Robert, of Satchi & Satchi, dubbed a title "Love Marks"


30 second commercials not cutting it??
So incorporate the brands into the content!!
If I were Starbucks, could you imagine what it would have done if the TV show Friends was housed in a Starbucks

America is willing to consume crap.

If you can tell it was advertising, then it didn't work.
You can't talk about brand. It needs to feel natural.
It's still ... Product Placement.

BMW films: entertaining, seamless

American Express webisodes.

====

How do you Connect the people to the website you design?

RESPONSE on D2L:
Write it like a blog entry (250 words) put in D2L dropbox
Reaction to this documentary

- Entertainment & Advertisement 

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Mr. RaPillie goes for a more psychological approach to advertising.
People have no idea why they buy what the buy..but they make up something to justify it.
Hummers in Manhattan?!

People buy with their cortex, Give them a chance. Give them a break (oh we did a good job)

Had people write words that they associate with "Luxury"



Technique of Listening
Head to the public..
What is the language, facts, to make American's say: It's okay.
What words will best sell an issue?

"I am much more interested in How you feel and how you think."






Virtual Class Thursday (D2L)
- Blog assigment (see above)
- Read Lecture
- Do Design / Editing / Exercise

Web Writing

Web Writing

Importance of Web writing
- Printed documents are still a preferred way of reading and delivering many kinds of documents. But...
- Given this reality, it is important that all mass media practitioners know how to re-purpose print docs for the web, and more specifically, how to write effectively for the web.

###

Web Content
One form of writing that the Web shares with print is the inverted pyramid.
###

Short paragraphs
using 3-4 sentences at most
visible enticements for the reader to read.
lots of white space
single space paragraphs and double space between graphs
####

Headers, Hyperlinks, Bolding, and Lists
all emphasis techniques that help readers scan text more quickly
use hyperlinks effectively
make liberal use of headers
bold key phrases
###

Headings
readers look at headings and subheadings first
Newspapers and ad campaigns have some of the best headings writers, so studying them is a worthwhile investment of your time.

Kinds of Headings
short, direct and ideally us keywords

Question Headings - readers read with questions, so questions make good headings (but not yes or no answers!!)

Statement Headings - these use a noun and a verb such as Ravens drop 7th straight  that appears on the front page of the Balimore Sun online.

Topic headings - these are a word or short phrase such as Day in Pictures on the front page of BBC site

For Consistency, try to stick to one kind of heading throughout ###


Headline writing rules

Sometimes a verb or part of a verb from is understood but not explicitly stated:
- Smith on team's final roster
- Murfreesboro man charged with robbery
   (###

Subheadings
every few paragraphs
pick out a word or phrase
###

break it up into manageable links
###


Bolded Words and Phrases
solid blocks of time can make the page look

Listsused to aid ease of reading
help readers keep track of steps
add white space to the page
give a sense of chronological order
include a lead ###

Hyperlinkstoo many can be confusing and difficult to read
should be supportive of the message of your page
###

Link Etiquette - warn of offsite links
- provide link titles on hover
- group links or consider putting them in a box- link to the page of info ###

"pretend you're high schoolers"

Wrote headlines in-class mine are below:

7-8 words

Write a headline

Story 1 :
- Teen Mothers getting paid for not getting laid
- Money Motivates Teen Mothers with new Program

Story 2 :
- Ring! Ring! Your homework is calling!
- Dial in for success
- So Call Me Maybe
- Homework Hotline just got HAWT

Story 3 :
- Slippery shoes cause havoc
- Championship slips from under team's feet
- Shoe defect slips up basketball teams
- CAUTION: Floors are slippery when wet

Story 4 :
- WANTED: Testosterone in MCHS Theatre Dept.
- Our theatre needs more testosterone

Story 5 :
- If you’re gonna rob a bank...
- “This iz a stikkup”
- Alleged robber denied because of competitor’s stationary
- How NOT to rob a bank.

Story 6 :
- 15-month-old appears in court
- DUI? Blame the baby!  (original idea from Chris Bishop)

Story 7 :
- ?MS
- “911, What is your emergency?”
- Putting the “Emergency” in 911
- Putting the E in E911
- E is for Emergency

"Writing for the Web"

my favorite phrase from the handout: "personal superfluous information"

such as: "My name is John, I've been an amateur gardener for three years, and I created this page using Shovelworks for Imagemaker ... "

Know anyone who does this in person all the time?? Cough, Patrick, cough, Barry...

Theory Models

Discussion over "is the media inherently good or bad":
- Balance is seen in the eyes of their particular persuasion so a left wing news looks objective to a left wing person..but to a right-wing person it looks skewed.
- Is the media powerful? or is it the audience?



Power of People: Passive vs Active Theories

In the beginning..Powerful effects theory ruled!!
The empirical tradition is changing.
Began with the idea that the audiences is composed of naive receptacles for media messages. In other words -- "here's the hoop now jump, jump!"

>> The Effects Tradition
This tradition of audience research began at the turn of the century. Melkote notes that "during the priod between the two World Wars, the mass media were viewed as powerful instruments which could be successfully used to maniple people's opinions and attitudes, and thereby their behaviors, in a relatively short period of time."

This school of research simply made "post hoc" links between news stories and events seemingly inspired them.

+ Note the limited outlets, which makes powerful little system.
"This thing started this" very simple


War of the Worlds
Take for example Orson Welles' radio program the was broadcast October 1938. This broadcast seemed to prove the magic bullet theory of direct, powerful effects correct!


The Halloween Hoax
Orson and writer Howard Koch reword HG Wells' classic as a series of live news bulletins covering an alien invasion of the real New Jersey town of Grovers Mills. The public hysteria and media coverage the hoax generated brought a publicly chastened but privately overjoyed to Welles national fame. Can it be a coincidence that the first sentence he says as Kane is: “Don’t believe everything you hear on the radio”?

The broadcast reached six million people

Incited one million into a panic believing that Martians were actually attacking us

–People left their homes, lined up at bus stations and were in a general state of panic

>> 1930s - 1950s: Minimal Effects
Scientific methods from psychology and sociology - experiments an surveys proved that the effects of media in changing behavioral and affective patterns were minimal.

•Lazersfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet’s (1944) voter studies showed that membership in peer groups was more predictive of people’s voting habits

•Katz and Lazersfeld (1955) two-step flow theory showed that some individuals are more likely to be affected by the media than others

>> Two-step Flow Theory
Media information moves from media to "opinion leaders" and down to individuals. Media seems to reinforce already existing opinion rather than changing them.
+ Media..enforcing the opinions we already have.

Here comes television
Noelle-Neumann (1973) said that television’s invasion of American homes brought about a return to the idea of powerful media effects.

>> The Spiral of Silence
Noelle-Neumann's theory that showed how if a minority voice and viewpoint were given precedence in the media then that viewpoint would be dispersed. It would then have one of three effects on the audience:
1. Outcry
2. Agreement or 
3. Silence -- "Silence" could occur among readers or viewers of media even if the view of the media consumer actually was the view of the majority; the presentation of the minority viewpoint in the media as “the majority” would be enough to silence such viewers.

EXAMPLE
Broccoli farmers (the few) call on reporters to do a story on broccoli, and the other stations pick up on the story. The farmers even pay for studies to be done that is picked up by other media. So the broccoli info is now dispersed everywhere. Because of all the media coverage of broccoli, the other crop people don't say anything.


>> Uses and Gratifications
By the mid 1970s, uses and gratifications
theory gained credence. By deeming the media to be a product that was actively and selectively consumed by the audience for information or entertainment purposes, this particular theory granted the most activity to the audience. Herta Herzog is usually given credit for beginning the uses and gratification approach to mass communication.

In her 1944 article "Motivations and Gratifications of Daily Serial Listeners" she interviewed 100 radio soap-opera fans in order to understand why so many housewives were attracted to the genre. This theory was revived in the 1970s by Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch.

U&G: The Revival
Katz, Blumber and Gurevitch explained that "ample evidence exists to suggest that people go out of their way to utilize the media to accomplish certain goals and derive specific gratifications. In short, information and entertainment needs significantly drive the behaviors of media audiences” (Wicks, p. 17).

EX: I go to the media that gives me what I need.


Cultivation Analysis
Gerbner's (1973) cultivation analysis looked at the long-term effects on the media on an audience. McQuail (1973) explains that, for Gerbner, the televised message is "distinctive and deviant from 'reality' on several key points, yet persistent exposure to it leads to its adoption as a consensual view of (American) society." Many of Gerbner's studies looked at the long term effects of media violence on children.

Can you think of examples of possible "cultivated thoughts" that the audience possess?
- stereotypes
- exposure to violence (becomes immune to real violence)
- MTV's "Jackass" setting themselves on fire, DYING.

>> Agenda Setting
McCombs and Shaw (1972) introduced the idea that the media doesn't tell us how to think - just what to think about. It does so by deciding what should and should not be covered.


British Cultural Studies
British cultural studies and political economy theory arose in the 1960s and 1970s at the same time that Americans were speaking of the “Spiral of Silence” and “Uses and Gratifications.” British cultural studies combines “neomarxist theory with ideas and research methods derived from diverse sources including literary criticism, linguistics, anthropology, and history” (Baran & Davis, 2003).

The first wave of media analysis come from literary studies, next wave form sociology “in particular, in sociology’s interest in the mass media’s role in the construction of social and political consensus”

The late 60s early 70s saw a turn to an increased focus on social meanings and on the political implications of media messages

British cultural studies scholars borrowed from ideas from the neomarxists. These scholars are firmly committed to polysemy -- the idea that multiple meanings are in a text. Stuart Hall, who led the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham during the 1960s,combined all of these ideas into what he calls social semiotics and developed the pivotal encoding/decoding theory that changed the face of critical cultural studies.

Polysemy - multiple meanings in a text

Decoding/Encoding Model
Based upon his model, there are three ways in which meaning can be accessed:
1. Preferred meaning
2. Negotiated meaning
3. Oppositional readings

Our goal was to make a FUNNY sitcom...kinda reminds me of Family Guy.
Or slaves reading the bible...owners wanted the "listen to your master" but the slaves read "let my people go"

Tuner (1996) sees this work as a turning point in BCS (British Cultural Studies). In this article, Hall makes a conclusive break with the then dominant American communication models, with aesthetics and with the notion of the audience as passive consumers of mass culture.


Constructionism
Similar to the BCS

Both lean towards studying the actual audience as opposed to merely theorizing ideas about the audience members.

Both interested in the culture of audience members and how different cultural experiences shape a different interaction with media Constructionism uses more psychological theory; BCC uses more literary and ethnographic methods and theory


"the study of constructionism begins with the assumption that truthful and objective message do not exist. The messages that are produced by the media are interpretations that have been crafted to reflect the reality that the producers see. Audience members then interpret these messages in the context of knowledge that is stored in schemas.” “The knowledge about various topics accumulates over time ultimately producing schemas.” The media produces frames that can alter schemas over time and change people’s opinions.

Schemas are important in constructionism


Four types of schemas

self-schemas: all of the images and ideas you have about yourself

person schemas: knowledge clusters about others - all of the info about gender, race, physical properties, personality traits, and other ##

role schemas: intended to provide cues as to how people should behave in certain situations.

scripts: (or event schemas) guide everyday behavior. Social norms encourage appropriate behavior in different circumstances – recurring themes in media allow the audience to make the proper inferential leaps in plots

(example: Gingers..soulless)


Why are these theories important?

You are a media practitioner and these theories will help you to anticipate how a message you produce will interact with the audience -

Which theory is most useful to you as a future media producer? Why?

Which theory resonates most with you? Why?

"It doesn't just accidentally happen" We need to put careful thought into constructing a message.


** Pick out 3 theories, explain them in your own words, and give one example (story/article/tweet) in each theory. **
200 words on each point

* Understand the differences between these theories *

** Read PDF on D2L "Writing for the Web" **

** Fill in missing notes **