Topic 1:

Current Media Landscapes: Interpreting and Deconstructing Media Messages

OUTLINE:
1) The New Normal in New Media: An overview of the Philippine media landscape
 Print
o Only 22 percent of Filipino respondents get their news from newspapers, as
majority (55 percent) said they ‘prefer to watch news online rather than read’
(Newman et al., 2020, p.15). This finding suggests that trends as early as 2013
are continuing: As early as seven years ago, barely one in 10 Filipinos read
newspapers everyday (Philippine Statistics Authority, 2013).
 Radio
o Radio continues to be a significant source of information for Filipinos, as it
reaches even the ‘remotest’ areas, as noted by the Media Ownership Monitor or
MoM (2017). There is no recent data on audiences’ attitudes toward radio as
source of content; the most recent publicly available data indicates that as of
2013, it is the second most used medium (see Philippine Statistics Authority,
2013). About two out of five – 41.4 percent – listen to the radio at least once a
week.

Radio reaches 85 percent of Philippine households, based on 2012 data

(National Commission on Culture and Arts, cited by Communicating with
Disaster-Affected Communities Network, 2012, p.13).

There is indeed a need for up-to-date empirical studies exploring the role of radio
in urban areas where online media news reach is rapidly increasing, as well as in
rural areas where internet infrastructure remains wanting.

 Television
o In a Nielsen survey in 2016 (cited by Media Ownership Monitor or MoM, 2017),
television is the most trusted source of political information (58 percent of the
sample).

o Cable/satellite technologies offer subscriptions to Filipinos based in other parts of

the globe, although cable/satellite subscriptions are limited to only 12 percent of
urban Philippines (MoM, 2017).

o Subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) services, which allows viewers to access

video content through the internet, is also on the rise in the country and
surprisingly has found a way to co-exist with cable television (Chua, 2018).

The Paradigm Shift

 o However, the forced closure of ABS CBN, the oldest television company in
Southeast Asia (Regencia, 2020), in May this year might change this
longstanding status quo. The leading network in terms of market share, ABS
CBN has 42 television stations, 23 radio stations, and 10 digital broadcast
channels, all of which stopped airing a day after its 25-year-franchise to operate
expired (Chua, 2020).

 Digital Media
o The Philippines is ranked 12th worldwide in terms of the number of internet users
as of the first quarter of 2020 (Internet World Stats, 2020a), this despite having
one of the slowest average internet speeds in the world (ABS CBN News, 2019;
Akamai Technologies, Inc., 2017).

o According to the Speedtest Global Index, which ranks over 130 countries
according to average internet speed, Philippines ranks 103rd out of 139 countries
with its average speed falling below the global average (ABS CBN News, 2019).

o Filipinos are also at the top spot worldwide when it comes to the amount of time
spent on internet: an average of nine hours and 45 minutes everyday (We are
Social and Hootsuite, 2020, cited by Kemp, 2020). This is probably linked to the
slow average internet speed, but the factors have yet to be determined through
empirical studies.

 Social networks
o The report showed that Philippines has 73 million active social media users. This
figure bears more significance if contextualized – the total population as of 2020
is roughly 109 million. An overwhelming 98 percent of these users access social
media networks through their smartphones. These figures are higher than the
numbers in some highly developed countries like Japan and South Korea (House
of IT, 2018).

o Facebook is the most widely used platform – 96 percent of internet users use the
network, much higher than the U.S. figure (We are Social and Hootsuite, 2020).
This is followed by YouTube (95 percent), Facebook Messenger (89 percent),
Instagram (64 percent), and Twitter (56 percent).

o Social media is also used somewhat extensively in e-commerce as 29 percent of

the internet-using population search and purchase products through social media
(We are Social and Hootsuite, 2018).

o However, social media has become ‘weaponized’ in this setting (Ong and
Cabañes, 2016, p.1), as groups and individuals were found to be implementing
massive disinformation and discourse-hijacking campaigns for political agenda
(p.5).
 o Ong and Cabañes’ (2016) conducted in-depth interviews and online observation
with operators of fake Facebook and Twitter accounts and the strategists who
manage them. The researchers found that click farms, fake news, and troll
armies were used systematically by players across the political spectrum to sow
disinformation in social media.

o In another report, the political party of the incumbent president Rodrigo Duterte,
Partido Demokratiko Pilipino Lakas ng Bayan or PDP Laban, was found to be
hiring fake account operators especially during the campaign period (Bradshaw
and Howard, 2017, p. 17). Duterte himself admitted that during the presidential
campaign period in 2016, people were paid about USD 200,000 to ‘defend him
on social media’ (Ranada, 2017).

 Opinion Makers
o The idea of ‘opinion makers’ in the Philippines can be broken into three: first, the
‘influencers’ in social media, second, the oft-discussed or oft-cited public figures
in mainstream media, and third, media personalities who provide insights in
established broadcast programmes (such as news anchors). The second and
third also manage their respective accounts or pages in social media.

o There is no up-to-date empirical data on the visibility and framing of public

personalities (e.g. President Rodrigo Duterte) in mainstream media. However, in
a survey with a sample of journalists in 2018, a significant number of
respondents reported that there is an effort to tone down articles critical of the
Duterte regime or to ‘avoid antagonizing’ the administration (Estella, 2018).

https://medialandscapes.org/country/philippines/media/opinion-makers

2) Defining media and media messages (traditional and new media, meaning is
constructed)
- Propaganda and Persuasion
o Encyclopedia Britannica defines propaganda simply as the “manipulation of
information to influence public opinion (Britannica Concise Encyclopedia).
o In modern society, the persuasive power of the mass media is well known.
Governments, corporations, nonprofit organizations, and political campaigns
rely on both new and old media to create messages and to send them to the
general public. The comparatively unregulated nature of U.S. media has
made, for better or worse, a society in which the tools of public persuasion
are available to everyone.
- Media and Behavior- mention desensitization
o Although the mass media send messages created specifically for public
consumption, they also convey messages that are not properly defined as
propaganda or persuasion. Some argue that these messages influence
 behavior, especially the behavior of young people (Beatty, 2006). Violent,
sexual, and compulsive behaviors have been linked to media consumption
and thus raise important questions about the effects of media on culture.
- Violence and the Media
o Whether violent media actually cause violence remains unknown, but
unquestionably these forms of media send an emotional message to which
individuals respond. Media messages are not limited to overt statements;
they can also use emotions, such as fear, love, happiness, and depression.
These emotional reactions partially account for the intense power of media in
our culture.
- Sex and the Media
o A recent study by researchers at the University of North Carolina entitled
“Sexy Media Matter: Exposure to Sexual Content in Music, Movies,
Television, and Magazines Predicts Black and White Adolescents’ Sexual
Behavior” found that young people with heavy exposure to sexually themed
media ranging from music to movies are twice as likely to engage in early
sexual behavior as young people with light exposure. Although the study
does not prove a conclusive link between sexual behavior and sexually
oriented media, researchers concluded that media acted as an influential
source of information about sex for these youth groups (Dohney, 2006).
- Cultural Messages and the Media
o Celebrities can also reinforce cultural stereotypes that marginalize certain
groups. Television and magazines from the mid-20th century often portrayed
women in a submissive, domestic role, both reflecting and reinforcing the
cultural limitations imposed on women at the time.
- New Media and Society
o New media—the Internet and other digital forms of communication—have
had a large effect on society. This communication and information revolution
has created a great deal of anguish about digital literacy and other issues that
inevitably accompany such a social change.
- Information and Literacy
o Customized news feeds allow individuals to receive only the kinds of news
and information they want and thus block out sources that report unwanted
stories or perspectives.

o Many cultural critics have pointed to this kind of information filtering as the
source of increasing political division and resulting loss of civic discourse.
When media consumers hear only the information they want to, the common
ground of public discourse that stems from general agreement on certain
principles inevitably grows smaller (Kakutani, 2010).

o On one hand, the growth of the Internet as the primary information source
exposes the public to increased levels of text, thereby increasing overall
literacy. Indeed, written text is essential to the Internet: Web content is
overwhelmingly text-based, and successful participation in Internet culture
through the use of blogs, forums, or a personal website requires a degree of
 textual literacy that is not necessary for engagement in television, music, or
movies.
- Convergence Culture
o “By convergence, I mean the flow of content across multiple media platforms,
the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory
behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the
kinds of entertainment experiences they want (Jenkins, 2006).”
o Humorous or poignant excerpts from television or radio broadcasts are often
posted on social media sites and blogs, where they gain popularity and are
seen by more people than had seen the original broadcast.
o New media have encouraged greater personal participation in media as a
whole. Although the long-term cultural consequences of this shift cannot yet
be assessed, the development is undeniably a novel one. As audiences
become more adept at navigating media, this trend will undoubtedly increase.
- https://open.lib.umn.edu/mediaandculture/chapter/2-1-mass-media-and-its-
messages/

3) What is the influence of media over how we live? (your relationship with
Philippine media)- Ask students to reflect- exercise number 1
"Instagram is rated as the worst social media platform when it comes to its impact on
young people's mental health, a UK survey suggests," BBC News reports.
The survey asked 1,479 young people aged 14-24 to score popular social media apps
on issues such as anxiety, depression, loneliness, bullying, body image and "fear of
missing out" – where your social media peers seem to be enjoying a better quality of life.
The survey fed into a larger report looking more generally at the impact of social media
on people in this age group – so-called "digital natives", who have never lived in a world
without the internet.
- https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-diet/instagram-ranked-worst-for-mental-health-in-
teen-survey/
Filipino doctors told a different narrative that questioned the potential of technologies for
rating their work, and questioned patient misinformation as preventing them from effectively
treating and interacting with their patients.
- https://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1005&context=comstudies_facpub

4) How is meaning in media messages constructed (mention representation theory by

Stuart Hall and political economy of media- Chomsky- avoid being too technical)
Media literacy: the ability to ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, CREATE, and ACT using
all forms of communication is interdisciplinary by nature. Media literacy represents a
 necessary, inevitable, and realistic response to the complex, ever-changing electronic
environment and communication cornucopia that surround us.
To become a successful student, responsible citizen, productive worker, or competent
and conscientious consumer, individuals need to develop expertise with the increasingly
sophisticated information and entertainment media that address us on a multi-sensory
level, affecting the way we think, feel, and behave.
- https://namle.net/publications/media-literacy-definitions/
“Now, what this idea that media practices, among other things, represent topics,
represent types of people, represent events, represent situations; what we’re talking
about is the fact that in the notion of representations is the idea of giving meaning. So
the representation is the way in which meaning is somehow given to the things which
are depicted through the images or whatever it is, on screens or the words on a page
which stand for what we’re talking about.
And if you think that the meaning that it is giving is very different from or a kind of
distortion of what it really means, then your work on representation would be in
measuring that gap between what one might think of as the true meaning of an event (or
an object) and how it is presented in the media. And there’s a lot of very good work in
media studies, which is exactly like this.”
- https://www.mediaed.org/transcripts/Stuart-Hall-Representation-and-the-Media-
Transcript.pdf
- https://shop.mediaed.org/representation--the-media-p174.aspx

The propaganda model for the manufacture of public consent describes five
editorially distorting filters, which are applied to the reporting of news in mass
communications media. These five filters of editorial bias are:

1. Size, ownership, and profit orientation: The dominant mass-media outlets are large
profit-based operations, and therefore they must cater to the financial interests of the
owners such as corporations and controlling investors. The size of a media company
is a consequence of the investment capital required for the mass-communications
technology required to reach a mass audience of viewers, listeners, and readers.

2. The advertising license to do business: Since the majority of the revenue of major
media outlets derives from advertising (not from sales or subscriptions), advertisers
have acquired a "de facto licensing authority." Media outlets are not commercially
viable without the support of advertisers. News media must therefore cater to the
political prejudices and economic desires of their advertisers. This has weakened the
working class press, for example, and also helps explain the attrition in the number
of newspapers.
3. Sourcing mass media news: Herman and Chomsky argue that "the large
bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access [to
the news], by their contribution to reducing the media's costs of acquiring [...] and
producing, news. The large entities that provide this subsidy become 'routine' news
 sources and have privileged access to the gates. Non-routine sources must struggle
for access, and may be ignored by the arbitrary decision of the gatekeepers."
Editorial distortion is aggravated by the news media's dependence upon private and
governmental news sources. If a given newspaper, television station, magazine, etc.,
incurs disfavor from the sources, it is subtly excluded from access to information.
Consequently, it loses readers or viewers, and ultimately, advertisers. To minimize
such financial danger, news media businesses editorially distort their reporting to
favor government and corporate policies in order to stay in business.

4. Flak and the enforcers: "Flak" refers to negative responses to a media statement or
program (e.g. letters, complaints, lawsuits, or legislative actions). Flak can be
expensive to the media, either due to loss of advertising revenue, or due to the costs
of legal defense or defense of the media outlet's public image. Flak can be organized
by powerful, private influence groups (e.g. think tanks). The prospect of eliciting flak
can be a deterrent to the reporting of certain kinds of facts or opinions.

5. Anti-communism/war on terror: Anti-communism was included as a filter in the

original 1988 edition of the book, but Chomsky argues that since the end of the Cold
War (1945–91) anticommunism was replaced by the "war on terror" as the major
social control mechanism.-They need someone to pin on – communism,othered
socio-cultural groups
- Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent#Propaganda_model_of_communic
ation

5) How to interpret meaning in unregulated media messages (provide methods and

techniques using the 5 core values of proactive communication- c/o Mel)

The 5 Features of Communication

Messages or Texts-
The core of communication study.-Key element in the crossroads discipline (academic
areas dealing with human symbolic activity)
Creation of Messages-
The content and form of a text are usually constructed, invented, planned, crafted, constituted,
selected, or adopted by the communicator.
-Agency of the communicator (conscious choice of message form and substance)

Interpretation of Messages-
-The meaning that a message holds for the creators and receivers doesn’t reside in the words
that are spoken, written, or acted out. Words and symbols are polysemic- open to multiple
interpretations-“Humans act toward people or things on the basis of the meanings they assign
to those people or things.”- Herbert Blumer

A Relational Process
-The flow of communication is always in flux, never completely the same, and can only be
described with reference to what went before and what is yet to come.-The communication
process is more about relationships than it is about content.- Celeste Codit

Messages That Elicit a Response

“ Communication,’ in its broadest interpretation, may be defined as the eliciting of a response.” If
a message fails to stimulate any cognitive, emotional, or behavioral reaction, it seems pointless
to refer to it as communication - Frank Dance
5 CORE CONCEPTS OF MEDIA MESSAGES
By considering the core concepts behind every media message, you equip yourself with
an ability to analyze and interpret a message — and to accept or reject its legitimacy.

1. All media messages are constructed.

Media texts are built just as surely as buildings and highways are built. The key behind
this concept is figuring out who constructed the message, out of what materials and to
what effect.
2. Media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules.
Each form of communication has its own creative language: scary music heightens fear,
camera close-ups convey intimacy, big headlines signal significance. Understanding the
grammar, syntax and metaphor of media language helps us to be less susceptible to
manipulation.
3. Different people experience the same media message differently.- 4th feature: A
relational process
Audiences play a role in interpreting media messages because each audience member
brings to the message a unique set of life experiences. Differences in age, gender,
education and cultural upbringing will generate unique interpretations.
4. Media have embedded values and points of view.- 2nd feature: Creation of messages
Because they are constructed, media messages carry a subtext of who and what is
important — at least to the person or people creating the message. The choice of a
character’s age, gender or race, the selection of a setting, and the actions within the plot
are just some of the ways that values become “embedded” in a television show, a movie
or an advertisement.
5. Most media messages are organized to gain profit and/or power.
Much of the world’s media were developed as money-making enterprises. Newspapers
and magazines lay out their pages with ads first; the space remaining is devoted to
news. Likewise, commercials are part and parcel of most television watching. Now, the
Internet has become an international platform through which groups or individuals can
attempt to persuade.
 By considering the core concepts behind every media message, you equip yourself with
an ability to analyze and interpret a message — and to accept or reject its legitimacy.
- https://yali.state.gov/media-literacy-five-core-concepts/

References:
https://yali.state.gov/media-literacy-five-core-concepts/
https://sites.uni.edu/fabos/ml/medialit.html
Philippine media landscapes:
https://medialandscapes.org/country/philippines/media/digital-media