Facebook

Donald Matheson

University of Canterbury

Facebook is the world’s largest social networking service (SNS; → Social Media). Launched in 2004, it has quickly extended beyond Harvard University to become intertwined with many aspects of social life, from friendships to playing games to commerce and politics. How Facebook is used – and why it has become so successful – are central questions of much research.

Facebook is best understood as a social environment. That is, it is used by different people for many different purposes. There is wide agreement among researchers that people tend to use Facebook more to deepen existing social relations than to make new connections, although the ease with which temporary and distant relationships can be entered into is also central to its appeal (→ Communication Networks; Network Organizations through Communication Technology). Some US-based research suggests Facebook operates by a logic or culture favoring honesty about identity and that its users tend to be more socially engaged than the wider population or have a stronger desire to connect with others. However, these early generalizations are being revised as other cultures are studied – see, e.g., Miller’s ethnography (2011) on Trinidadian uses of Facebook for scandal, gossip and sexual display.

Much research focuses on Facebook’s wider impact on social and political life, e.g., its role in protests during the 2011 Arab Spring revolts (→ Communication Technology and Democracy). Concerns over Facebook’s privacy standards and mining of personal data have fed the critique that the company accelerates a culture of ‘participatory surveillance.’ It is the central example of the emergence of marketing focused on selling interpersonal relationships to which the platform has contributed (→ Marketing: Communication Tools).

References and Suggested Readings

1. Joinson, A. (2008). “Looking at,” “looking up” or “keeping up with” people? Motives and uses of Facebook. CHI 2008 Proceedings, April 5–10, Florence, pp. 1027–1036.
2. Miller, D. (2011). Tales from Facebook. Cambridge: Polity.
3. Wilson, R. E., Gosling, S. D. & Graham, L. T. (2012). A review of Facebook research in the social sciences. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(3), 203–220.

Fear Induction through Media Content

Glenn G. Sparks

Purdue University

The capacity for media messages to induce fear has been the object of scholarly inquiry since at least the 1930s, when the Payne Fund Studies launched the first systematic effort to study the impact of media on children and adolescents. As part of that effort, Herbert Blumer (1933) found that 93 percent of the children who participated in his study reported that they had been scared by something seen in a motion picture. Despite the prevalence of fright reactions to media indicated by Blumer’s finding, there was little research on this topic for nearly 50 years (→ Media Effects, History of). The fact that media presentations induced fear became apparent in sporadic scholarly reports about media impact or in news reports such as those that followed the 1938 broadcast of the radio play by Orson Welles, The War of the Worlds. A few scholarly reports in the 1950s and 1960s devoted attention to the media’s capacity to induce fear in audiences but, for the most part, the topic received little attention until the 1980s.

In the 1980s, research initiated by US researcher Joanne Cantor developed the research on media-induced fear in a theoretical and systematic fashion (Cantor 1994). The first studies in this program of research were designed in order to identify the types of movies and TV programs that were most likely to cause fright reactions in children at different points in their cognitive development. A second emphasis in this research was to identify the coping behaviors that parents could employ to successfully reduce media-induced fears in their children (→ Violence as Media Content, Effects on Children of). Building upon the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget, Cantor made sense of children’s fright reactions to media by emphasizing a child’s level of cognitive functioning at either the pre-operational (2–7 years) or concrete operational (7–11 years) stage of development. For example, in the younger age group, children’s fright reactions to media are far more likely to be determined by visual appearances. In the simplest terms, if something looks scary, then younger children are likely to be scared. In contrast, children in the older age group are able to integrate conceptual information into their perceptions such that they can discount visual appearances in favor of other facts that help to override any fear (Sparks & Cantor 1986).

In 1983, the broadcast of a movie about nuclear holocaust (The Day After) inspired research that helped to document the potential of media to induce fear in audiences. The broadcast was noteworthy in that it inspired an entire article in American Psychologist (Schofield & Pavelchak 1983). Studies of the emotional fallout from the movie by other research teams (e.g., Palmer et al. 1983) served to galvanize an interest in children’s fear reactions to media that had begun earlier in the decade.

One phenomenon that is likely to attract the attention of future researchers is the tendency for some individuals to suffer lingering emotional reactions to frightening media that may endure for days, weeks, months, and even years after initial exposure to the media stimulus. The fact that some people suffer such disturbances is well documented (Bozzuto 1975). Research by Hoekstra, Harris, and Helmick (1999) explored autobiographical memories of movie-induced fear and found strong evidence that media fear induced in childhood is easily recalled by college students years after the precipitating media event. Cantor has drawn upon the work of LeDoux (1996) in suggesting that the amygdala may play a pivotal role in preserving fright responses that arise from media.

Several recent studies show a growing interest in the capacity of particular types of news reports to induce fear and other negative emotions in viewers. Unz, Schwab, and Winterhoff-Spurk (2008) studied exposure to different kinds of violence in news reports and found that fear was one of the typical emotional reactions that viewers experienced. More recently, Nellis and Savage (2012) completed a telephone survey of over 500 respondents and discovered a positive relationship between exposure to news reports about terrorism and fear for the safety of others as a result of a terror attack.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Blumer, H. (1933). Movies and conduct. London: Macmillan.
2. Bozzuto, J. C. (1975). Cinematic neurosis following “The Exorcist.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 161, 43–48.
3. Cantor, J. (1994). Fright reactions to mass media. In J. Bryant & D. Zillmann (eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 213–245.
4. Hoekstra, S. J., Harris, R. J., & Helmick, A. L. (1999). Autobiographical memories about the experience of seeing frightening movies in childhood. Media Psychology, 1(2), 117–140.
5. LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. New York: Simon and Schuster.
6. Nellis, A. M. & Savage, J. (2012). Does watching the news affect fear of terrorism?: The importance of media exposure on terrorism fear. Crime & Delinquency, 58(5): 748–768.
7. Palmer, E., Hockett, A., & Dean, W. (1983). The television family and children’s fright reactions. Journal of Family Issues, 4(2), 279–292.
8. Schofield, J. & Pavelchak, M. (1983). The Day After: The impact of a media event. American Psychologist, 40(5), 542–548.
9. Sparks, G. & Cantor, J. (1986). Developmental differences in fright responses to a television program depicting a character transformation. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 30, 309–323.
10. Unz, D., Schwab, F., & Winterhoff-Spurk, P. (2008). TV news – the daily horror: Emotional effects of violent television news. Journal of Media Psychology, 20(4), 141–155.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

Chris Paterson

University of Leeds

Seeta Peña Gangadharan

Open Technology Institute

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is the regulatory agency in the United States charged with oversight of electronic communications (→ Television Broadcasting, Regulation of; United States of America: Media System). Since the 1980s, it has taken much of the blame for the lack of diversity and the concentration of ownership in US broadcasting, the rise of media conglomerates, and pro-market regulation of Internet-related industries.

The agency was created in 1934, when Congress passed the Communications Act. Since its creation, the commission has been controversial. It was meant to uphold the decision of Congress following World War I that broadcasting should be mostly commercial and free of government control; but also to insure that access to the airwaves was allocated responsibly and that those granted access put the public’s interest before their own. With three of the five appointed commissioners representing the president’s party, the agency tends to keep broadcast policy aligned with ruling party ideology.

The Communications Act has been amended many times and still dictates most US communications policy. With jurisdiction over the use of radio spectrum, the FCC is most well known for licensing broadcast stations and using its authority to enforce basic regulations. Broadcasters have wide leeway in what they can and cannot do, and despite public protest, fines for breaching regulations are rare, and revocations of licenses or denials of license renewal even rarer.

The FCC also regulates Internet-based communications but with greater leniency than broadcasting (→ Internet Law and Regulation). The Telecommunications Act of 1996 distinguished information services from telecommunication services, limiting the agency’s power over broadband providers. Debate over network neutrality questions whether the FCC has the authority to prevent Internet service providers from discriminating in the types of data that travel over its networks. As broadband services become the mainstay of the modern communications landscape, the FCC’s limited authority over information services may coincide with a decline of its power and influence.

References and Suggested Readings

1. McChesney, R. (2004). The problem of the media: US communication politics in the 21st century. New York: Monthly Review Press.
2. Wu, T. (2003). Network neutrality, broadband discrimination. Colorado Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology Law, 2, 11–12, 20–21.

Feminist and Gender Studies

Cynthia Carter

Cardiff University

Kaitlynn Mendes

De Montfort University

Feminist and gender studies represent key fields of research within communication studies today. It is difficult to discuss their emergence and developments as two separate entities, as the two often overlap. However, it can be noted that mainstream forms of gender studies research tend to differ from feminist studies politically, theoretically, and methodologically. As Dow and Condit (2005, 449) argue, “The field of communication has come too far to categorize all research on women, or even gender, as feminist in its orientation. Rather, the moniker of ‘feminist’ is reserved for research that studies communication theories and practices from a perspective that ultimately is oriented toward the achievement of ‘gender justice,’ a goal that takes into account the ways that gender always already intersects with race, ethnicity, sexuality, and class.”

As a political movement for gender justice, feminist communication scholarship always has at its core a goal of examining how gender relations are represented (→ Gender: Representation in the Media; Media and Perceptions of Reality), the ways in which audiences make sense of them, or how media practitioners contribute to perpetuating gender injustice. At the center of this is the view that hierarchical gender relations (re)produce social inequalities across time and cultures, thereby making it difficult for men and women to be equal partners in democratic society. Feminist communication research is tied to a political movement for structural social change rather than individual change. As such, feminist scholarly research is inseparable from activist forms of feminism. On the other hand, gender studies are not implicitly political in the sense of having an agenda for social change on the basis of gender equality. Instead, the principal aim has been one of raising public awareness about the ways in which gender affects the individual’s life choices and chances, and thus women’s and men’s relative opportunities for personal and career success.

Gender Studies in Communication

Communication scholarship examining gender issues has a longer history than that of feminist scholarship. ‘Gender studies’ usually refers to the social constructions of masculinity and femininity. However, studies on sex roles – or the belief that women and men are innately different – are often included in this definition. Until the 1980s, it was generally assumed that gender research would focus on women, but this soon extended to the ways in which men and masculinity were portrayed and (re)constructed (→ Masculinity and the Media).

As noted above, gender and communication studies have largely been grounded in assumptions about the individual’s acquisition of gendered attitudes and behaviors, and the ways in which socially constructed gender roles can negatively impact on the individual’s life chances, especially in terms of sense of self-worth, → social perceptions of women, and their career prospects.

Feminist Studies in Communication

Feminist thought, political activity, and scholarship come in a myriad of different forms, from western constructions such as liberal, radical, socialist, and postmodern feminism (→ Postmodernism and Communication), as well as the more recent phenomenon of → postfeminism, to the development of postcolonial and transnational feminist theory (→ Feminist Media Studies, Transnational). Globally, we have also seen the development of Latina, black, Islamic, and Asian feminist theory. The range of conceptual and methodological approaches within feminism has led to different forms and practices of communication research and feminisms that are increasingly sensitive to cultural, social, and economic differences (as well as points of connection locally and internationally).

One of the most notable interventions second-wave feminist communication scholars have made over the past few decades centers on the analysis of the ways in which women are portrayed in the media (→ Content Analysis, Qualitative; Content Analysis, Quantitative). Numerous studies found that the most recurrent media images of women were those of submissive wives and mothers located within domestic settings (→ Women in the Media, Images of). Additionally, research on female journalists confirmed that they were typically relegated to covering ‘soft’ or human-interest news and that those who read the news on television were often judged by appearance over their journalistic experience (→ Gender: Representation in the Media ). Here, the argument was that taken together these things led to an undervaluation of women’s contributions to society and their status as citizens.

Some researchers, however, came to the view that such content analyses were problematic because they were only able to comment on the manifest media content of specific images rather than wider structures of → meaning. Out of this developed, particularly in Europe, critical forms of analysis, such as the semiotic and ideological analyses of British → cultural studies (→ Semiotics).

New Developments

From the 1980s onward, more complex approaches to the analysis of gender in the media emerged. New theories were advanced by poststructuralism and postmodernism, for instance, which provided feminist communication scholars with conceptual frameworks that went beyond calls for the media to reflect more realistic images of women, to instead embrace the argument that the media play an important role in constructing certain gendered realities.

This research eventually led the way to an interest in understanding how the media help to construct gender identity and subjectivity, which are seen to be partial and fragmented, rather than unified and rational, assumptions underpinning previous notions of gender subjectivity. This development allowed feminist communication scholars to see gender as fluid and open to change, rather than immutable and ahistorical. In opening up gender to this sort of theoretical scrutiny, it also followed that feminism itself was re-examined with a view to exploring the ways in which mainstream forms of feminism could be used to advance the position of certain women (particularly white, middle-class, heterosexual women), while at the same time doing little to raise awareness or improve the position of women of color, working-class women, lesbians, women with disabilities, etc. It was at this point that there began to develop postcolonial and transnational forms of feminism, as well as black feminism, Latina feminism, Islamic feminism, cyberfeminism, and third-wave feminism, among others, highlighting the extent to which western political thought, including that of some forms of feminism, had tended to silence the voices of those who were not included in the dominant discourses of western feminism.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Byerly, C.M. (ed.) (2013). The Palgrave international handbook of women and journalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
2. Carter, C., Steiner, L., & McLaughlin, L. (eds.) (2014). The Routledge companion to media and gender. London: Routledge.
3. Dow, B. & Condit, C. M. (2005). The state of the art in feminist scholarship in communication. Journal of Communication, 55(3), 448–478.
4. Gill, R. (2007). Gender and the media. Cambridge: Polity.
5. Watson, E. and Shaw, M. E. (eds.) (2011). Performing American masculinities: The 21st-century man in popular culture. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.

Feminist Media

Linda Steiner

University of Maryland

‘Feminist media’ describes media that advocate expanded political, social, and cultural roles for women and expose gender oppression – interstructured with oppression by sexual orientation, class, race, ethnicity, and religion, or other bases of invidious distinction. Advocates can thereby redefine news, share information unavailable in mainstream media, challenge conventional (typically gendered) power hierarchies, and sustain a feminist community (→ Advocacy Journalism). Participants experiment with alternative ways of organizing their work, articulate their own ethical standards, and develop their media skills. Feminist journalism originally emerged from efforts on behalf of other causes, such as the abolition of slavery, as well as ones specifically for women, such as health and dress reform, and especially voting rights.

Notably, both mainstream media and periodicals of the radical countercultural movements of the 1960s were seen to marginalize – or altogether ignore – feminist issues and the newly emerging feminist movement (→ Women in the Media, Images of). So, literally hundreds of feminist periodicals emerged in the 1970s. Some lasted only for a year or less, given the economic, physical, and time burdens of production. Feminist magazines were specifically designed for and by different races, ethnicities, religions, professions, sexualities, and political persuasions. The larger magazines usually tried to reach women outside the liberation movement, or at least to unite disparate factions within feminism.

Arguably, the Internet more easily accommodates feminists. Low costs (of entry production and distribution), design plasticity, and potential for online feedback and interactivity allow ‘cyberfeminists’ (→ Cyberfeminism) to experiment in the name of individuality, self-expression, and choice. Beginning in the late 1980s, a new feminism emerged that emphasized multiculturalism, everyday domestic politics, and individual freedoms; its advocates continue to exploit the affordances of the Internet. Many use blogs and related social networking sites, including YouTube.

References and Suggested Readings

1. “Feminist Media Production in Europe.” (n.d.). Grassroots feminism. At http://www.grassrootsfeminism.net/cms/node/760, accessed July 25, 2014.
2. Zobl, E. & Drüeke, R. (eds.) (2012). Feminist media: Participatory spaces, networks and cultural citizenship. Bielefeld: transcript.

Feminist Media Studies, Transnational

Radha S. Hegde

New York University

Transnational feminist media studies responds to the challenges posed by globalization (→ Globalization Theories). Scholars representing this approach assume that the cross-border movement of capital, commodities, images, and people has led to interconnected lines of power and forms of gendered inequities. New technologies, systems of media representation, and digital networks would serve as crucial nodes in the transport and circulation of these modalities of power. Enmeshed in these changes are regulatory regimes that remain classed, raced, and gendered. Transnational analysis enables alternate feminist mappings of globalization which deconstruct and critique universalist assumptions, the essentialization of cultures, and the circulatory power of Euro modernity (→ Modernity), while maintaining that cultural politics exceeds national boundaries (→ Culture: Definitions and Concepts).

Transnational feminist media scholarship, greatly influenced by postcolonial theory, begins from the premise that we decenter the singular perspective of the west while considering the political particularities of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. While globalization has necessitated new forms of labor and migration, new global actors typically fall outside the frame of dominant accounts of global processes. The mediated production of culture has to be situated against the backdrop of larger flows, and a pervasive neo-liberal worldview. The term ‘transnational’ offers conceptual pliability and provides an analytical rubric for feminist scholars to move beyond modes of liberal multiculturalism and produce politically and intellectually incisive scholarship.

The focus on the transnational forces a rethinking of categories such as nation, tradition, modernity, and culture in pliable terms. Transnational feminist scholarship does not claim allegiance to a particular method or approach that privileges political economy over cultural approaches. Instead, the transnational directs our scholarly response to the cross-cutting issues of race, class, and gender that intersect and travel across geographic and political landscapes (→ Gender: Representation in the Media).

References and Suggested Readings

1. Grewal, I. & Kaplan, C. (eds.) (1994). Scattered hegemonies: Postmodernity and transnational feminist practices. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
2. Hegde, R. (ed.) (2011). Circuits of visibility: Gender and transnational media cultures. New York: New York University Press.
3. Sassen, S. (1998). Globalization and its discontents. New York: New Press.

Feminization of Media Content

Johanna Dorer

University of Vienna

The term ‘feminization’ tends to be used in communication studies in two basic ways. On the one hand, it describes any increases in the proportion of women working in a particular media profession. On the other, it refers to a process in which communication norms, values, and behaviors coded as ‘masculine’ are becoming gradually modified, if not replaced, by others associated with the ‘feminine.’

Well-known gendered binary hierarchies, read as chains of equivalents for masculinity versus femininity, include, among others: public vs commercial broadcasting, serious papers vs tabloids (→ Tabloidization), national and international politics vs local interest and gossip, public vs private or personal issues, public vs aesthetic interest, information vs entertainment, facts vs opinion, or objective vs emotional style (→ Objectivity in Reporting). In all of these, the dimension coded as masculine is regarded as the norm, conferring prestige and professional status, whereas the dimension coded as feminine carries low prestige and is equated with a lack of professionalism.

Initially, it was hoped that as more female journalists were hired, the underrepresentation and discriminatory portrayal of women in media content would change as a result (→ Sex Role Stereotypes in the Media; Women in the Media, Images of). This claim has not yet been substantiated; however, it does appear that, similar to other counter-hegemonic discourses, the gradual emergence of feminist public spheres, and feminist publications catering to them, is influencing and challenging sexism in the mainstream media.

It may well have been changes in media genres and content – produced in part by increasing commercialization and a growing market orientation, with its emphasis on human interest and soft, emotional, or sensational news – that has paved the way for more women entering the field of journalism (→ Commercialization: Impact on Media Content). As in other professions, it has been the emancipation of women generally that has led to more women gaining admission to journalism and related fields. This has been reinforced by a growing media differentiation, such as public and commercial broadcasting, local and transnational coverage, and new formats in the print media, public relations, and online journalism (→ Diversification of Media Markets).

References and Suggested Readings

1. Chambers, D., Steiner, L., & Fleming, C. (2005). Women and journalism. London: Routledge.
2. Dorer, J. (2005). The gendered relationship between journalism and public relations in Austria and Germany. Communications, 30(2), 183–200.
3. Mayer, V. (2014). To communicate is human; to chat is female. The feminization of US media work. In C. Carter, L. Steiner, & L. McLaughlin (eds.), The Routledge companion to media and gender. London: Routledge, pp. 51–60.

Fiction

Marie-Laure Ryan

Independent scholar

The term ‘fiction’ refers to a representation not committed to the truth. The overwhelming majority of fictions are narratives, but not all narratives are fictional (e.g., → news or biographies). The fictionality of a text is a pragmatic issue, i.e., not a matter of what the text is about, but a matter of how it is used in social interaction. Even though literary critics have detected stylistic features that betray fictional status, these features are not mandatory. The fictional status of a text is usually suggested to users through a so-called paratextual device, such as the labels ‘novel,’ ‘short story,’ or ‘drama.’ These labels instruct the user how to process the information of the text (→ Text and Intertextuality).

Fictionality is a relevant analytical category for all media and art forms that involve a language track: literature, film, drama, opera (→ Art as Communication). For philosophers such as John Searle (1975) and Kendall Walton (1990), the nature of fiction lies in pretense and make-believe. While Searle regards fictionality as “pretending to make assertions,” Walton defines fiction as a “prop in a game of make-believe”, that is, as an object that inspires imagining rather than belief. In novels, authors pretend to be narrators who describe actual states of affairs, while in drama and film (→ Film Genres), actors pretend to be characters. The relevance of the concept of fiction for media without a language track is more controversial.

The concept is better applicable to the images of film and → photography than to painting because these images are obtained through a mechanical recording device that gives them documentary value. They become fictional when this value is playfully subverted through pretense. As a man-made artifact, painting has a much more limited documentary potential, and rather than developing a fictionality of its own, it can only be considered fictional when it illustrates a fictional story. The necessary condition for the use of a type of → signs (→ Semiotics) to be regarded as fiction is that these signs can also be used to make truth claims.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Lewis, D. (1978). Truth in fiction. American Philosophical Quarterly, 15, 37–46.
2. Searle, J. (1975). The logical status of fictional discourse. New Literary History, 6, 319–32.
3. Walton. K. (1990). Mimesis as make-believe: On the foundations of the representational arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Field Research

James A. Anderson

University of Utah

Field research is a somewhat dated term that is used to describe research conducted under the naturally occurring contingencies of unmanipulated or naturally manipulated contexts. In this usage it is contrasted with laboratory research, which is to be conducted under highly controlled circumstances and fully manipulated contexts (→ Experiment, Laboratory). Field researchers catalog objects, places, and spaces, do content analysis, perform → surveys, do case studies, hold interviews, conduct focus groups, perform non-participative observation of naturally occurring behavior, or use similar research methodologies (→ Experiment, Field; Content Analysis, Quantitative). The cataloging of objects, places, and spaces generally has to do with their role in some activity. Objects might be a tool, a ceremonial element, or ritual implement; a place might be a geographical or architectural configuration that facilitates an enactment or set of beliefs.

The significant components in all of these methods are (a) the targeted object, place, space, or text is considered an actuality whose existence does not depend on the research; (b) the respondent retains a high level of autonomy of action; (c) the researcher is considered a neutral element and not a stakeholder in the object/place/text/action; (d) the relationship between the researcher and the respondent is not part of the results; (e) the respondent’s behavior is considered to be naturally occurring; and (f) the responses given are (therefore) ingenuously true. The data are descriptors of the respondent and/or the action, and the findings are considered descriptive rather than causal in character.

Field research is generally not considered part of the ‘interpretive turn’ of qualitative methods, ethnography, or social action perspectives (→ Qualitative Methodology; Ethnography of Communication). The principal difference between interpretive field methods and objective field methods is the former’s commitment to member understandings and the latter’s dependence on some form of literal meaning. Interpretivists hold that nothing reads itself; the meaning of things is rarely obvious; and what can be understood through impersonal observation is merely a surface reading.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Atkinson, P. (1990). The ethnographic imagination: Textual constructions of reality. London: Routledge.
2. Diesing, P. (1971). Patterns of discovery in the social sciences. New York: Aldine.
3. Presser, C. A. & Dasilva, P. B. (1996). Sociology and interpretation: From Weber to Habermas. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Film Genres

Catherine Preston

University of Kansas

Film genre refers to specific structure or thematic content as organized by the narrative and stylistic or formal aspects, setting or mise-en-scène, costume, character, and → cinematography. Fiction film genres have their origin in literary genres: comedy, tragedy, and melodrama. Others are based more specifically on cinematic capabilities such as documentary, experimental, and animation (Stam 2000, 14). The development of genre criticism can be divided into three areas: text, industry, and audience. Film scholarship has conceived → ‘meaning’ as a discursive construction that occurs within a particular historical context and is related to other social, political, and aesthetic formations. In reference to the study of film genres, this has meant an ongoing conceptual broadening of the relations between genre aesthetics, industry, and audience expectations.

Early genre criticism focused on the → Hollywood film text, specifically on narrative, → iconography, themes and motifs (→ Film Theory). Critics argued that, through iconography, Western and Gangster genres communicated cultural myths (Stam 2000). In the early 1980s this approach was found to be problematic as it ignored other film genres that lacked the iconography of the Western. Contemporary theoretical frameworks, such as psychoanalysis, postmodernism, and postcolonialism, have had a significant impact on genre analysis (→ Postmodernism and Communication). In an effort to move beyond use of myth as a primary operation of genre, critics argued that identity of genres depends on the specific relations established between a range of elements rather than on the selective representation of particular motifs (Gledhill 2000, 224). For example, the postmodern genre is characterized by irony, parody, hybridity, bricolage, and pastiche. Staiger (1997) criticizes American film industry as a form of “inbreeding” because of its lack of cinematic creativity as production becomes increasingly cannibalistic through seemingly endless sequels, prequels, and remakes.

An audience studies perspective examines genres as provisional and malleable conceptual environments, in which viewers participate in construction of meaning as well as modify frameworks. An implicit communication between producers and consumers, it allows the audience to approach any given film from a range of expectations in which issues of texts and aesthetic overlap with those of “industry and institution, history and society, culture and audiences” (Gledhill 2000, 221).

An industry approach analyzes genre as an economic method of production, marketing, and distribution of film which attempts to control the ongoing uncertainties of the business (→ Political Economy of the Media). For example, diminishing domestic ticket sales has led to the increased production of the action film specifically for export to a global audience. The most profitable genre on a global scale, these films become identifiable in part by their lack of dependence on dialogue for narrative progression.

In the new media environment of digital production many scholars assert that previous nomenclature used to refer to film types is not as operative (→ Digital Media, History of; Digital Imagery). Much genre criticism emerged from analysis of the Hollywood classical period and cannot easily be transposed to the contemporary situation. Not intended to reference the industry’s aesthetic deficiencies, ‘mode’ is a more adequate reference to contemporary production trends that fall outside the traditional generic method of organization. ‘Serial mode’ refers to Hollywood’s tendency toward sequels, prequels, series, follow-ups, and franchises as well as ‘blockbuster,’ ‘event cinema,’ ‘summer movies,’ and ‘special effects movies.’

Andrew Darley argues that in a postmodern culture of intertextuality and radical eclecticism brought about by new technological developments “genre has a far more limited structural role to play,” referring perhaps to nothing more than “the general level of a form itself – narrative cinema” (Darley 2000, 144). Nonetheless, it remains a useful conceptual tool both for audiences and those studying the relationship between American film, international film, and global culture.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Darley, A. (2000). Visual digital culture: Surface play and spectacle in new media genres. London: Routledge.
2. Gledhill, C. (2000). Rethinking genre. In C. Gledhill & L. Williams (eds.), Reinventing film studies. London: Arnold, pp. 221–243.
3. Moine, R. (2008). Cinema Genres (trans. Alistair Fox and Hilary Radner). Oxford: Blackwell.
4. Staiger, J. (1997). Hybrid or inbred: The purity hypothesis and Hollywood genre history. Film Criticism, 22(1), 5–20.
5. Stam, R. (2000). Film theory: An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.

Film Production

Gianluca Sergi

University of Nottingham

The term ‘film production’ routinely indicates the stage in the making of a movie where actual filming takes place. While this usage is shared by both the public and filmmakers, it is somewhat misleading in that it draws attention to just one aspect of filmmaking at the expense of a fuller understanding of the different stages of production and of the key relationships at the heart of the filmmaking process.

Pre-production, the earliest stage of production, involves a handful of people who are in a position to shape a film project. Traditionally an original idea is developed or developed from existing material. Producers, writers, actors, and directors may all have a share in this process, though the relative contribution of each will vary substantially from case to case. This stage is extremely complex: Despite lengthy negotiations involving a number of professionals, many projects never get past this first hurdle. Indeed, it is not uncommon for directors to be replaced at this stage, and for projects to change hands within a studio or even go to a different studio altogether. This instability can become problematic since financial backing needs to be secured: the popular belief that → Hollywood operates according to a ‘cookie-cutting’ approach does not adequately account for the complexities and vagaries of this development stage.

The director and the producer are usually in charge of the project at this stage. The distinction between financial and administrative duties (the domain of the producer) and creative tasks (understood as the domain of the director) that is traditionally understood as regulating this key relationship is also somewhat artificial: time, budget, and individual personalities come together in a number of potential combinations. Despite substantial variations in practices, filmmakers and studios alike will see the producer as perhaps the only figure who can ensure that all those involved in the production of a film work to the same brief, acting also as liaison between the director and studios. Engendering a common sense of purpose (something that filmmakers often refer to as ‘vision’) of what the film would ideally ultimately feel, look, and sound like would appear to be a basic requirement at this stage (→ Cinema). For a fuller account of the key individual roles in filmmaking, see Goldman (1985).

Once the production team has been assembled, locations have been selected, and a draft version of the script is available, the project moves into the production or filming stage. Interestingly, many directors indicate this stage as the least enjoyable phase of the filmmaking process. This view is mostly due to the huge pressure that is placed on filmmakers to make a great deal of decisions in a very short amount of time. Indeed, many see the cumulative effect of the inevitable mistakes that are made along the way as a direct threat to the ultimate success of the project, especially during principal photography (i.e., when all key personnel are involved in shooting).

Once filming has been completed, the film moves into post-production. In the majority of projects editors put together a rough edit of the film (using a temporary soundtrack), to which both the composer and the sound team will work. Often working to accelerated schedules due to a combination of pre-arranged release dates and filming delays and reshoots, the editorial teams face a constant race against time. It is also not rare at this stage of the project for the director and other members of the original crew to have begun work on a different project. This, in effect, means that a considerable amount of delegation of responsibilities may have to take place from the director to the film editor and the supervising sound editor. This is one of the key reasons why so many directors prefer to work with the same crew wherever possible: the relationship they develop over the years ensures that working to the same brief does not require their constant presence at every stage of the production.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Breskin, D. (1997). Inner views: Filmmakers in conversation. New York: Da Capo.
2. Goldman, W. (1985). Adventures in the screen trade. London: Futura.
3. Heisner, B. (1997). Production design in contemporary American film: A critical study of 23 American films and their designers. London: McFarland.
4. Obst, L. (1996). Hello, he lied: And other truths from the Hollywood trenches. New York: Broadway.
5. Oldham, G. (1995). First cut: Conversations with film editors. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
6. Schaefer, D. & Salvato, L. (1984). Masters of light: Conversations with contemporary cinematographers. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
7. Schanzer, K. & Wright, T. L. (1993). American screenwriters: The insiders look at the craft and the business of writing movies. New York: Avon.
8. Thom, R. (1999). Designing a movie for sound. At www.filmsound.org/articles/designing_for_sound.htm, accessed July 26, 2014.

Film Theory

Warren Buckland

Oxford Brookes University

Film theory is a form of speculative thought that aims to make visible the underlying structures and absent causes that confer order and intelligibility upon films. These structures and causes, while not observable in themselves, are made visible by theory. The ultimate objective of film theory is to construct models of film’s nonobservable underlying structures. A particular theory enables the analyst to identify specific aspects of a film’s structure, and to look at and listen to the film from the perspective of its own values. The aim of ‘theory’ is to construct different conceptual perspectives on a film.

Classical film theory, which dominated from the 1920s to the early 1960s, tried to define film as an art and attempted to achieve this from an idealist perspective by focusing on film’s ontology, or ‘essence.’ Different classical film theorists located film’s essence in two incommensurate, diametrically opposed qualities of cinema: its photographic recording capacity (e.g., ‘Realists’ such as André Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer) and its unique formal techniques that offer a new way of seeing (e.g., ‘Formalists’ such as Rudolf Arnheim [1957] and Sergei Eisenstein).

In the 1960s, film semioticians such as Christian Metz did not conceive ‘film’ to be a pre-given, unproblematic entity, nor did they try to define its essence. Instead, they aimed to define film’s specificity by constructing a general model of its underlying system of → codes. Metz’s first semiotic model was the “grande syntagmatique” (1974a), which outlined the different spatio-temporal codes underlying and lending structure to all narrative films. Metz’s second semiotic model, developed in Language and Cinema (1974b), defined filmic specificity in terms of a specific combination of five overlapping codes – iconicity, mechanical duplication, multiplicity, movement, and mechanically produced multiple moving images.

Out of semiotics emerged modern film theory of the 1970s (sometimes called ‘contemporary film theory’) of (again) Metz, Jean-Louis Baudry, theorists centered around the journal Screen (Stephen Heath, Colin MacCabe) and feminist film scholars (Laura Mulvey) (see Rosen 1986). They combined the Marxism of Louis Althusser with the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan to examine the underlying ideological, social, and psychical absent causes that structure mainstream films and create the illusion of spectators as free, coherent subjects. They then mapped out the space for an oppositional avant-garde cinema that would break the ideological hold over mainstream film (→ Structuralism).

Cognitive film theory emerged in the 1980s as an alternative to modern film theory. Cognitivists share with the modernists a focus on the specific nature of the interface between film and spectator. But whereas the modernists examined the way a film addresses the spectator’s irrational/unconscious desires and fantasies, the cognitivists analyzed the knowledge and competence spectators employ to comprehend films and engage them on rational and emotional levels (Bordwell 1985; Branigan 1992; Tan 1996; → Cognitive Science).

The New Lacanians (most notably Slavoj Žižek) are united by a new concern with what has been called the ‘ethics’ of psychoanalysis and its contemporary political ramifications, which revolve around democracy, totalitarianism, universality, and multiculturalism. Instead of concentrating on the imaginary and the symbolic when assessing the film experience in relation to a spectator, the New Lacanians focus on the imaginary and the real.

Film scholars not persuaded by psychoanalytic or Marxist film theory, but equally dissatisfied with the cognitivists’ analysis of rational and emotional reactions to films, have turned to the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze’s two books on cinema (The Movement Image [1986] and The Time Image [1989]), offer an alternative conceptualization of the film experience as an embodied, spatio-temporal event. Deleuze is not a film theorist in the commonly accepted sense, for he theorizes with rather than about the cinema. What seems to have drawn him to the cinema is the relation of bodies, matter, and perception, seen as a traditional philosophical problem, and in the twentieth century most vigorously explored by phenomenology.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Arnheim, R. (1957). Film as art. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
2. Bordwell, D. (1985). Narration in the fiction film. London: Routledge.
3. Branigan, E. (1992). Narrative comprehension and film. London: Routledge.
4. Deleuze, G. (1986). Cinema 1: The movement image (trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam). London: Athlone.
5. Deleuze, G. (1989). Cinema 2: The time image (trans. H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta). London: Athlone.
6. Metz, C. (1974a). Film language: A semiotics of the cinema(trans. M. Taylor). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
7. Metz, C. (1974b). Language and cinema (trans. D.-J. Umiker-Sebeok). The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.
8. Rosen, P. (ed.) (1986). Narrative, apparatus, ideology: A film theory reader. New York: Columbia University Press.
9. Tan, E. S. (1996). Emotion and the structure of narrative film: Film as an emotional machine (trans. B. Fasting). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Financial Communication

Holly R. Hutchins

University of Houston (retired)

Financial communication entails all of the strategies, tactics, and tools used to share financial data and recommendations with investors and other interested parties. Around the world, companies need strong, proactive financial communication competencies to successfully help shape the evolution of capital markets for themselves and their industries. In return, companies likely will see the benefits in stock price and operating performance. Thompson (2002, 1) defines ‘investor relations’ (IR) as “a strategic management responsibility that integrates finance, communication, marketing and securities laws compliance to enable the most effective two-way communication between a company, the financial community, and other constituencies, which ultimately contributes to a company’s securities achieving fair valuation.”

Financial communication evolved during the 1960s and 1970s with a promotional flair. Annual reports became costly showpieces. ‘Dog and pony shows,’ the euphemism for multimedia presentations at analyst and stockholder meetings, became the trademark of full-service → public relations (PR) departments. Financial communicators were technicians, leveraging their communication skills to create the necessary tools, such as reports, speeches, and multimedia presentations, to inform the investment community.

The bull market throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century led to two developments that dramatically altered the financial communication landscape. First, the competition for capital and for market visibility became intense. Second, the boom rudely forced aside the notion of investing for long-term value and replaced it with a very short-term focused approach that worried about satisfying capital markets quarter to quarter.

Financial scandals at Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom, Tyco International, Adelphia Communications, and other blue-chip companies argued for new standards of financial communication. Multiple issues were blamed, among them aggressive accounting practices to meet quarterly earnings expectations, conflicts of interest between research and investment banking, weaknesses in board oversight, or conflicts of interest between auditing and consulting in major accounting firms.

Five developments are singled out for fueling the future growth of IR: (1) a greater need to satisfy more stringent disclosure requirements; (2) a broader communications role in the company; (3) a more proactive attitude by corporate managements toward IR; (4) more involvement in the strategic planning process; and (5) greater information needs from institutions and portfolio managers.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Berstein, L. (2003). Strategic communication: Defining a concept. National Investor Relations Institute Investor Relations Update, January, 1–6.
2. Driscoll, E. (2006). Sarbanes-Oxley not NYSE For New York. At http://eddriscoll.com/archives/009133.php, accessed 26 July 2014.
3. Thompson, L. M., Jr. (2002). Major developments affecting IR in 2002. National Investor Relations Institute Executive Alert, December 20, 1–13.

Flow Theory

Anja Kalch

University of Augsburg

Helena Bilandzic

University of Augsburg

Flow is a state sustained by intrinsic motivation that describes the desirable experience of being completely immersed in an activity (→ Involvement with Media Content), during which other stimuli present in the surroundings are not attended to. The concept was originally proposed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the 1970s (Csikszentmihalyi 1988) as an explanation for the pleasurable feelings elicited by everyday creative activities like painting, playing musical instruments, or dancing, and the motivation to engage in them.

In a state of optimal experience a person feels cognitively effective and wishes to maintain this enjoyable feeling. Csikszentmihalyi specified the concept by defining nine dimensions: someone who experiences flow is (1) fully concentrated on the specific task and experiences a (2) sense of control over the action. This is accompanied by (3) losing both awareness of oneself and one’s surroundings and (4) track of time; as a consequence, (5) action and awareness appear to be merged. Whether flow occurs or not depends on the relationship between an individual’s skill in carrying out a task and the challenges of the task. To experience flow, (6) skill level and challenge level must match. In this case, executing the task is (7) intrinsically rewarding and becomes autotelic. Activities that provide a clear goal-structure (8) and direct feedback (9) are most likely to create flow.

In the context of media uses and effects research flow is very similar to concepts such as absorption, → presence or transportation. Flow has been integrated into theories of narrative engagement and enjoyment, especially in the context of → video games. In media contexts, too, flow experiences are a result of a balanced relationship between skills of media users, e.g., abilities to interpret messages or play video games, and the challenges imposed by the text or game (Sherry 2004). Watching television or listening to the radio are typically not associated with difficulty; however, Sherry (2004) argues that demands for cognitive abilities of media users depend on the complexity of the media content.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988). The flow experience and its significance for human psychology. In M. Csikszentmihalyi & I. S. Csikszentmihalyi (eds.), Optimal experience: Psychological studies of flow in consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 15–35.
2. Sherry, J. L. (2004). Flow and media enjoyment. Communication Theory, 14(4), 328–347.
3. Weber, R., Tamborini, R., Westcott-Baker, A., & Kantor, B. (2009). Theorizing flow and media enjoyment as cognitive synchronization of attentional and reward networks. Communication Theory, 19, 397–422.

Framing Effects

Dietram A. Scheufele

University of Wisconsin–Madison

There is no single commonly accepted definition of framing in the field of communication. In fact, political communication scholars have offered a variety of conceptual and operational approaches to framing that all differ with respect to their underlying assumptions, the way they define frames and framing, their operational definitions, and very often also the outcomes of framing. Previous research can be classified based on its level of analysis and the specific process of framing that various studies have focused on. Scheufele (1999) differentiated media frames and audience frames. Based on these two broader concepts, he distinguished four processes that classify areas of framing research and outline the links among them: frame building, frame setting, individual-level effects of framing, and journalists as audiences for frames.

Types of Frames and Framing Processes

Media frames are defined as “a central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events” (Gamson & Modigliani 1987, 143). Media frames are important tools for journalists to reduce complexity and convey issues, such as welfare reform or stem cell research, in a way that allows audiences to make sense of them with limited amounts of prior information. For journalists, framing is therefore a means of presenting information in a format that fits the modalities and constraints of the medium they are writing or producing news content for (→ Framing of the News; News Routines).

Media frames work as organizing themes or ideas because they play to individual-level interpretive schemas among audiences (audience frames). These schemas are tools for information processing that allow people to categorize new information quickly and efficiently, based on how that information is framed or described by journalists. Audience frames can be defined as “mentally stored clusters of ideas that guide individuals’ processing of information” (Entman 1993, 53). Two types of frame of reference can be used to interpret and process information: global and long-term political views on the one hand, and short-term, issue-related frames of reference on the other hand. Goffman’s (1974) idea of frames of reference refers to more long-term, socialized schemas that are often socialized and shared in societies or at least within certain groups in societies. But in addition to these more long-term and broadly shared schemas, there are also short-term, issue-related frames of reference that are learned from mass media and that can have a significant impact on perceiving, organizing, and interpreting incoming information and on drawing inferences from that information (Pan & Kosicki 1993).

The Price, Tewksbury, and Powers (1997) applicability model of framing offers a theoretical explanation of how media frames and audience frames interact to influence individual perceptions and attitudes. They argue that frames work only if they are applicable to a specific interpretive schema. These interpretive schemas can be pre-existing ones that are acquired through socialization processes (→ Political Socialization through the Media) or other types of learning. But they can also be part of the message itself. Price et al.’s applicability model does imply that when audience members do not have an interpretive schema available to them in → memory, or the schema is not provided in a news story, a frame that applies the construct in a message will not be effective. Framing effects therefore vary in strength as a partial function of the fit between the schemas that a frame suggests should be applied to an issue, and either the presence of those frames in audience members’ existing knowledge or the content of the message (Scheufele & Tewksbury 2007).

Theoretical Explanations of Framing

Psychological approaches to framing research are often traced back to Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s (1979) notions of bounded rationality, more broadly, and prospect theory, in particular. The basic idea assumes that a given piece of information will be interpreted differently depending on which interpretive schema an individual applies. More importantly, however, different interpretive schemas can be invoked by framing the same message differently.

Sociological approaches to framing are often traced back to Erving Goffman’s (1974) notion of frames or primary frameworks. Goffman assumes that individuals cannot understand the world fully and therefore actively classify and interpret their life experiences to make sense of the world around them. An individual’s reaction to new information therefore depends on interpretive schemas Goffman calls “primary frameworks” (Goffman 1974, 21).

Framing is a multi-level construct. The term has been used almost interchangeably to describe individual-level media effects, macro-level influences on news content, and other related processes. At least four interrelated processes involving framing at different levels of analysis have been identified. Frame building refers to the linkages between various intrinsic and extrinsic influences on news coverage and the frames used in news coverage. These influences include the personal predispositions of journalists, organizational routines and pressures, the efforts by outside groups to promote certain frames, the impact of other parallel issues or events, and the type of policy arena where decision-making or conflict might take place. Frame setting refers to the process of frame transfer from media outlets to audiences. Most communication research has focused on a third process: individual-level effects of framing. These individual-level outcomes include attributions of responsibility, support for various policy proposals, or citizen competence. The last process related to framing that political communication scholars have explored is the idea of journalists themselves as audiences for frames.

Unresolved Issues in Framing Research

Framing research continues to struggle with at least three unresolved issues related to how the concept has been defined or measured. First, some scholars have argued that framing is just a conceptual extension of agenda setting. Like agenda setting, they argue, framing increases the salience of certain ‘aspects’ of an issue and therefore can be labeled “second-level agenda setting.” A number of scholars, however, have rejected that notion (for an overview, see Price et al. 1997; Scheufele & Tewksbury 2007). Rather, agenda setting is based on the notion of attitude accessibility. Framing is based on the concept of context-based perception, that is, on the assumption that subtle changes in the wording of the description of a situation might affect how audience members interpret this situation. In other words, framing influences how audiences think about issues, not by making aspects of the issue more salient, but by invoking interpretive schemas that influence the interpretation of incoming information.

The second unresolved area of framing research concerns the different types of frames identified in previous research. Scholars have operationalized media frames along dichotomies, such as episodic vs thematic frames or issue vs conflict frames or game schema coverage. As a result, communication researchers continue to have only a limited understanding of the specific frames that can trigger certain underlying interpretive schemas among audiences and therefore lead to various behavioral or cognitive outcomes. The final challenge for communication researchers is the inherent conflict between the different approaches to framing research that originated from the psychological and sociological foundations of the concept outlined earlier.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Towards clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43, 51–58.
2. Gamson, W. A. & Modigliani, A. (1987). The changing culture of affirmative action. In R. G. Braungart & M. M. Braungart (eds.), Research in political sociology, vol. 3. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, pp. 137–177.
3. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. New York: Harper and Row.
4. Iyengar, S. (1991). Is anyone responsible? How television frames political issues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
5. Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: Analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–291.
6. Lim, J. & Jones, L. (2010). A baseline summary of framing research in public relations from 1990 to 2009. Public Relations Review, 36(3), 292–297.
7. Pan, Z. & Kosicki, G. M. (1993). Framing analysis: An approach to news discourse. Political Communication, 10, 55–75.
8. Price, V., Tewksbury, D., & Powers, E. (1997). Switching trains of thought: The impact of news frames on readers’ cognitive responses. Communication Research, 24, 481–506.
9. Scheufele, D. A. (1999). Framing as a theory of media effects. Journal of Communication, 49(1), 103–122.
10. Scheufele, D. A. & Tewksbury, D. (2007). Framing, agenda-setting, and priming: The evolution of three media effects models. Journal of Communication, 57(1), 9–20.

Framing of the News

Zhongdang Pan

University of Wisconsin–Madison

Among various definitions of framing, the most widely circulated comes from Robert Entman: “To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described” (Entman 1993, 52; original emphasis). Focusing on the cognitive underpinnings associated with salience, this definition describes how varying salience is accomplished (via selection), where a frame resides (in text), and how such a text produces real political consequences (proving certain problem definition and policy prescription). In essence, frames are templates (ideas and principles) embedded in news texts; they are used to organize, and are also signified by, various symbolic elements like catchphrases or images.

Framing of news is a joint operation of journalists and various other social actors. These social actors operate as sources that supply journalists with not only information but also the primary definitions and vocabularies concerning an issue or event that is to be represented in news stories. In a pluralistic society, these social actors are not monolithic.

News framing research to date can be roughly grouped into two broad categories. In the first category, researchers have analyzed news texts in order to examine how an issue is framed in the news or how the framing of an issue in the media has evolved over time. In the second category, researchers have examined effects of news frames and how they cognitively evolve.

Six different systems of frame classification can be identified in the research literature: (1) gain vs loss frames; (2) thematic vs episodic frames (also individual vs societal frames); (3) strategy vs issue frames in media coverage of election campaigns and policy debates; (4) value frames (i.e., some enduring values functioning as ‘central organizing ideas’ in news texts); (5) news values as frames (such as human interest, conflict); and (6) mental templates based on familiar social institutions being used metaphorically in representing unfamiliar or more complex issues.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43, 51–58.
2. Lecheler, Sophie & Vresse, Claes H. de (2012). News framing and public opinion: A mediation analysis of framing effects on political attitudes. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 89(2), 185–204.
3. Pan, Z. & Kosicki, G. M. (1993). Framing analysis: An approach to news discourse. Political Communication, 10, 55–75.
4. Scheufele, D. A. & Tewksbury, D. (2007). Framing, agenda-setting, and priming: The evolution of three media effects models. Journal of Communication, 57(1), 9–20.

France: Media System

Philippe J. Maarek

University of East Paris

The French media was bound by law as early as 1789, when freedom of speech was one of the main demands of the French Revolution. Print media are now governed by regulations based on the law of July 29, 1881, which established freedom of the press and printed material as a principle (→ Freedom of the Press, Concept of).

Where audiovisual media are concerned, things have been rather different. Television and radio were a state monopoly for most of the twentieth century until socialist politician François Mitterrand became president in 1981 (→ Television Broadcasting, Regulation of). The law of September 30, 1986 on freedom of communication established a strong, fully independent regulating body for the audiovisual media, the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA). But French audiovisual media law currently faces three problems. First, the independent authority which regulates the Internet, the Autorité de Régulation des Communications Électroniques et des Postes (ARCEP), has a clear conflict of legal competence which is yet to be resolved with the CSA because of the increasing use of broadband Internet to convey ‘classic’ television channels as well as new ones carried, for instance, by YouTube or Dailymotion. The second problem is the discrepancies between the French and EU legal systems. The EU ‘Television without Borders’ Directive has thrown the French legal system into disarray, since under this law any channel authorized in any EU country is automatically authorized in the rest of the Union, outside CSA control. The third problem arises from a recurrent instability caused by political attempts to modify the system as soon as election results change the political balance. In 2013, for instance, the authority which oversees the fight against Internet piracy, the Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des oeuvres et la protection des droits sur Internet (HADOPI), was stripped of most of its powers – and of 25 percent of its funding – by the new socialist government.

The print press is split into two main areas, which are quite different: daily newspapers and magazines and other non-dailies. National and regional daily newspapers do not do particularly well, with a very small circulation compared with that in similar countries (about 2.5 million copies). The three main national dailies, Le Monde, Le Figaro and Libération, have recently been bought by wealthy investors seeking influence and ready to take on the newspapers’ debts. Ouest France, prevalent in the western part of the country, is the most important regional daily, selling about 750,000 copies a day. Among magazines – generally in better health – TV magazines have had the highest circulation for decades, though they are under threat from the free TV program guides included as supplements with some national and regional dailies. The leading magazine publisher used to be the Lagardère group, with its internationally known titles like Elle or Première, but its owner, Arnaud Lagardère, is progressively dismantling the group to fund his other activities. The German-origin Prisma group and the French part of the Italian Mondadori Press are important players in the sector.

Radio economics in France are still a consequence of radio’s longstanding situation as a state monopoly. Three of the biggest radio groups are just as they were before 1980: state-owned multi-channel Radio France and two private radio groups created in the 1950s, RTL and the Lagardère-owned Europe 1. Recent entrants to the field are the NRJ Group (music) and BFM Radio (news). Most of the hundreds of so-called ‘free radio’ stations authorized in 1981 did not survive or remained local.

The structure of French television has changed considerably since the mid 1980s. State-owned France Television is still a major player, but is hindered by financial difficulties. The TF1 group remains dominant, but with the appearance of new cable and digital channels its audience market share has gone down to only around 25 percent. The other major players are M6, initially dedicated to music but now a strong generalist channel, and Canal Plus, the first and dominant pay-TV channel, part of the Vivendi Group. The rise of independent group BFM, with its two TV channels, has been surprising, since it very quickly became the leading 24-hour news network.

As for the Internet and mobile phone network, the leader is still Orange, the former telecommunications monopoly France Telecom, now privatized. An independent player, Free, is a vigorous challenger: it has an efficient Internet terminal, the ‘Freebox,’ and made a strong entry in 2012 on the mobile phone market with a monthly subscription of only 2 euros. This has destabilized Orange, but more seriously damaged the two other smaller mobile phone players, Bouygues and SFR. About 70 percent of homes have broadband access.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Balle, F. (2011). Médias et sociétés [Media and societies], 15th edn. Paris: Montchrestien.
2. Derieux, E. & Granchet, A. (2013). Droit des médias [Media law], 5th edn. Paris: Dalloz.
3. Franceschini, L. & de Bellescize, D. (2003). Droit de la communication [Communication law]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
4. Statistical sources: ARCEP at www.arcep.fr; CSA at www.csa.fr; OJD (Office de Justification de la diffusion) at www.ojd.com.

Freedom of Communication

Brian Winston

University of Lincoln

The struggle for the practice of free ‘mass’ communication begins with the emergence of newspapers in the seventeenth century, but the press freedoms gained over the next 300 years have been limited to print (→ Newspaper, History of; Freedom of the Press, Concept of). Even in the west a media-blind right of free expression has never been established, and newer media from film through broadcasting and beyond have been subject to the imposition, or the attempted imposition, of specific controls.

Freedom of expression as a right was born in western Europe as a consequence of a desire to practice religion, within the bounds of Christianity, according to the dictates of one’s own conscience. Printing allowed for uncorrupted religious texts and enabled authority more efficiently to communicate with its subjects; but dissidents of all persuasions from heretics to astronomers could also use printing from type to promulgate their alternative views (→ Printing, History of). Authority attempted to control the press to its own advantage with licensing systems, but these censorship regimes were, as often as not, very leaky.

In 1644, during the English Civil War, the poet John Milton published, deliberately unlicensed: “The Areopagitica: A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of UNLICENS’D PRINTING, to the PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND.” “Give me the liberty to know,” he wrote, “to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience above all liberties” (Milton 1951). The Areopagitica was, however, no plea for unbridled free expression. Milton did not envisage, nor did the majority of those who succeeded him in holding free expression dear, a libertarian free-for-all. Necessary constraints upon expression would remain in place. The liberty was only from what came to be known as ‘prior restraint.’ In 1720, the London journalists John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, writing together under the pen-name ‘Cato,’ argued for a more general right of free expression (Trenchard & Gordon 1995, letter 15). Still this freedom only applied to print; the British stage, remained censored by a court official until 1968. Despite the failure to establish a media-blind right of free expression, by the end of the eighteenth century the principle was established in law. Article XI of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, passed in August 1789 at the outset of the French Revolution, finally makes the rhetoric of ‘Cato’ law. It did not last; but it did in the United States. The First Amendment, adopted in 1791, stated: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or of abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.” This is still in force.

With the coming of the new media of the twentieth century – → cinema, radio, and television – the tendency was to follow the model of the stage rather than of the press. With cinema, licensing controls were imposed. For radio the state needed to allocate wavebands to prevent interference. The interference in content this encouraged was carried over into television (→ Radio: Social History; Television, Social History of).

The contradiction between a fundamental right of expression and the control of specific media remains unaddressed. Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (1950), for example, states in a fashion to be found widely repeated in both international declarations and national laws since World War II: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” Yet this article goes on in overtly contradictory language to allow a state to require “the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema entertainments” without specifically excluding content regulation by prior constraint (Directorate of Human Rights 1992).

Up to the present the concept of free media expression has seen constraints by general laws and the principle that expression shall cause no legally measurable harm; by the nature of the medium involved; and by the changing social determinants of what constitutes expression sanctioned by community standards.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Braudel, F. (1993[1987]). A history of civilizations (trans. R. Mayne). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
2. Directorate of Human Rights. (1992). Human rights in international law. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Press.
3. Galilei, G. (1980). Selected works, trans. S. Drake. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
4. Milton, J. (1951[1644]). “Areopagitica” and “Of education.” Northbrook, IL: AHM.
5. Trenchard, J. & Gordon, T. (1995[1720]). Cato’s letters: Essays on liberty. 2 vols (ed. R. Hamowy). Indianopolis: Liberty Fund.
6. Winston, B. (2005). Messages: Free expression media and the west from Gutenberg to Google. London: Routledge.
7. Wyatt, Robert O. (1991). Free expression and the American public: A survey commemorating the 200th anniversary of the First Amendment. Washington, DC: American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Freedom of Information

Martin Halstuk

Penn State University

More than 80 nations around the world have adopted some form of a Freedom of Information (FOI) Law. Typically, FOI laws pertain to a right of public access to government-held records. The United States Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which was approved by Congress in 1965, has been a model for a majority of the international open-records laws. Before the FOIA was enacted about a dozen nations had some kind of open-records law, though these were typically weak and created for commercial purposes (→ Communication Law and Policy: North America).

The rise of transparent governance is grounded in the accountability principle of a representative democracy – namely that in an open and democratic society citizens must have a right of access to government-held information so they can hold the government responsible for its actions, and make informed decisions pertaining to self-rule.

Current laws vary in strength and weaknesses. China, for instance, recently marked the fifth anniversary of its version of an open-records statute called the Open Government Information law. It is a relatively weak law in terms of which government agencies are subject to the law, and heavily laden with exemptions to disclosure (→ Communication Law and Policy: Asia). All open-records laws have exemptions and vary in substantial ways. Typically, there are several exemptions common to all transparency of records laws: These categories include national defense and intelligence information, personal → privacy, law enforcement, commercial and business proprietary information, and executive privilege (e.g., records of deliberative processes that precede enactment of a law).

Most FOIA laws make information available to the general public and do not require that the requester provide a reason for acquiring the information. The legal bases for FOI laws can also vary widely from nation to nation. In some countries, freedom of information is embodied in laws that protect freedom of expression and freedom of the press. In other nations, it is a separate and distinct right.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Banisar, D. (2006). Freedom of information around the world 2006: A global survey of access to government information laws. At www.privacyinternational.org/foi/foisurvey2006.pdf, accessed July 26, 2014.
2. Cuillier, D. & Davis, C. (2011). The art of access: Strategies for acquiring public records. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
3. Shrivastava, K. M. (2009).The right to information: A global perspective. New Delhi: Lancer.

Freedom of the Press, Concept of

Joseph Russomanno

Arizona State University

Freedom of the press generally refers to the concept that media operate absent externally-imposed control or influence regarding the content they choose to publish and distribute. Historically, there has been an impulse by those who hold power to repress expression – spoken and written – particularly statements or opinions contrary to the policies of those in power (→ Censorship). The beginning of serious reasoning against repressive institutions – e.g., governments – and their inclination to proscribe expression is often credited to John Milton’s Areopagitica (1644). Published during the Enlightenment, Areopagitica not only ridiculed England’s licensing of the press, but also advocated for all ideas and opinions to be expressed and then fully considered, thereby allowing truth – or at least a close approximation of it – to be realized. This is the notion of an open marketplace of ideas (→ Freedom of Communication; Freedom of Information).

Among those influenced by the Enlightenment was James Madison, the primary author of the US Constitution’s First Amendment. Madison was also instrumental in structuring the US government, one premised on three branches checking one another. Press freedom was viewed as crucial in a self-governing democracy. This role of a free press in a democratic society is highlighted by the label the ‘fourth estate’ – an unofficial fourth government branch that holds officials in the other branches accountable. Historically, a rebellion against authoritarian control contributed to the development of democratic governments and, in turn, libertarian press systems (→ Media History). These are in place today in many nations, including throughout western Europe, much of the Americas, and in several Pacific Rim nations. Even these liberal-minded countries, however, have histories of not only struggling with the interpretation and implementation of freedom of expression, but also histories of speech and press suppression. For instance, in the US law struggled with the issue of how far to extend press freedom beyond merely prohibiting prior restraint – censorship imposed before publication.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Altschull, J. H. (1990). From Milton to McLuhan: The ideas behind American journalism. Harlow: Longman.
2. Levy, L. W. (1985). Emergence of a free press. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3. Trager, R. & Dickerson, D. L. (1999). Freedom of expression in the 21st century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge.