Radio

   The industries and institutions involved during the radio era were a huge driving force when discussing the influence on radio in the 1920's. They shaped the radio industry into what it is today with their constant competition and the birth of radio advertising.

   Had the industries and institutions not jumped in when they did, radio would have still been a government controlled technology, and public radio would have taken a few more years to become a reality. Rather than just leaving radio for the government to use as a communication source, the industries used the technology of radio to their advantage and tried to make money with it. With the mindset of making the radio something to be used by a consumer, the idea of broadcasting music and entertainment was developed and changed history. This brought the use of radio advertising, which eventually made a seamlessly fluid transition to television commercials. Without different broadcast companies competing for the most listeners, they had to step up their game to compete with the others around them, and were sure to play the most popular music at the time in order to get the most listeners; this directly reflects not only radio, but even the thoughts of modern television stations.
   This all happened due to the birth of the broadcasting stations NBC and CBS. They were companies trying to make money off of this new technology, and competing with each other for bigger profits and more listeners. Without Davis Sarnoff's vision of using the radio as a "household music box" then radio as we know it might have never happened, and without William S. Paley's knowledge of tobacco and using the radio as a means of advertising these radio stations would not have made near as much money as they did. Each one of them had their own respective broadcasting companies, but they both influenced each other with the ways that they used this new technology and both applied ideas and concepts which came from either one.

Social Learning in the Media

   The press has exploited social learning as mainly being a bad thing, and usually uses it to blame just about any criminal situation with children and teenagers. Social learning in the media is basically the act of seeing something on TV or in a film and imitating it in real life. The media has been blamed heavily for influencing children to do horrible things, one of the biggest was the Columbine school shooting. People blamed violent TV, films, and video games for driving the kids to shoot up their school, whenever there was really no solid proof of this. The media has come under fire for influencing people to commit crimes, and just like the Columbine massacre, it is usually just a blame and there is no hard evidence. A great example that Professor Straubhaar gave was that the film "Juno" has made people think of teen pregnancy more lightly, and I found this interesting because it was a much more indirect influence on the viewer, because rather than them imitating something they saw in a film their social perspectives changed because of it.
   There have also been cases where the media's influence is reported and proved as the sole reason for certain events. For instance, a Scottish teenager and his friends repeatedly beat up a 15 year old kid in their school because he had an English accent, and they were shouting "Freedom!" while kicking him on the ground; it seems evident from this that the film "Braveheart" had an impact on why these kids decided to beat up an English boy. Many instances like this example have been reported, with them ranging from people imitating Beavis and Butthead and burning their house down to torturing a girl while quoting "Child's Play 3". There have been few positive instances of social learning, but one that I've always found fascinating is that a kid who was confronted by a deadly moose 'feigned death' and made the Moose thinking he was dead so it passed by; the kid learned this as a skill on World of Warcraft.
  

Links:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/electronic-publications/stay-free/archives/20/media_influence1.html
http://wow.joystiq.com/2007/12/05/boy-attacked-by-moose-feigns-death-thanks-wow/

  
  

The Media Agenda

     Studying the basis behind the media's agenda helps me better understand why there is so much press over certain things, yet hardly any over others. In honor of 9/11, I will use that as an example of how the media's agenda influences what information is put on the front page and what is left to collect the dust.
     My understanding of the media's agenda is that they emphasize what they believe will have the most readers or viewers. They do this first of all in order to get the most money they can, but also because the press company has to be sure and not say anything that will steer away their regular audience. This also goes along with how those running and funding the company seem to regulate what the company reports. For instance, a very conservative newspaper wouldn't run a story about how they think gay marriage should be legal throughout the country, because not only would that story probably not get through the higher-ups, but the newspaper would lose a lot of faithful readers because they read that specific newspaper in order to get away from things like that.
     An example of the agenda in media that I found deals with post-9/11 news. Recently, just about every major news publication reported something about the Florida church that planned on burning Qurans on the anniversary of 9/11 this year as a front page story, and were sure to keep updating as the day grew near. Now, something I recently discovered is that four years ago, on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, there was a monument opened in New Jersey given to America as a gift from Russia. There was even a chain mail message sent around about this unknown monument, with the first line in the email being "I have never heard of this before...Why didn't the press report this?". This is a great example of the agenda in media because it shows what the news decides to make the front page and what gets unnoticed. Why the monument didn't get much press coverage is beyond me, but a main reason could be because it would be a nice gesture to the Russians to acknowledge this, and maybe some news corporations would rather not give any praise to Russia.
    The basic agenda of the media is to just put on the front page whatever will get the most people to take a look at it, even if there is other news that deserves the front page treatment just as much. The 9/11 Memorial opening definitely seems like something that would be front page material, with Bill Clinton even giving a speech at it; but I guess there was something else at the time that was thought to be more important by the news corporations and thus was given much more press.


Links:
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/tributes/teardrop.asp
http://www.911monument.com/
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-07-29/us/florida.burn.quran.day_1_american-muslims-religion-cair-spokesman-ibrahim-hooper?_s=PM:US
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-09-09/us/florida.quran.burning_1_quran-islamic-center-muslim-leader?_s=PM:US