Technological Change

            Even though industry factors, regulation and government intervention, and audience demand had important contributions in molding the radio industry in the 1920s, to me, technological advancement and radio innovations laid the foundations for these other forces to take place. Without modern radio technology at that time, these other factors would not have been as significant.

            We can’t talk about the affects of technological change without mentioning Guglielmo Marconi and David Sarnoff’s contributions. Marconi improved the Hertz transmitter, succeeded in having a transatlantic transmission in 1901, and founded British Marconi and American Marconi as two-way radio businesses, while Sarnoff developed the commercial radio industry and envisioned the radio as a household music box and a mass audience radio. After WWII, AT&T established itself as the first network. AT&T connected stations by telephone lines and was the first to use advertising and fees for using radio. Without these technological innovations, radio in the 1920s would not have been used as a universal means of communication or entertainment.

            Some people argue that government regulation was the most influential force in affecting the radio industry; however, government regulation would not have been necessary if technological advancement had not taken place. Because more frequencies had been discovered, the government had to step in to regulate who would be able to broadcast on these frequencies and established this by requiring radio stations to earn licenses. Also the government also only stepped in when AT&T started to have a monopoly on radio because of its state-of-the-art technology. The only reason government intervention was ever needed was because of technology and radio expansion. 

                                                                  photo taken from rent-direct.com

Cultivation

             My understanding of the term cultivation forces me to analyze the images from Tough Guise by thinking that they are planting the ideas of men needing to be tough and/or violent as normal. Then as we keep seeing these images over and over they become more common sense and men act upon these stereotypes.

            To me, I understand cultivation in media the same as cultivating land. In farming, you cultivate the ground so you can plant seeds to grow into vegetables, trees or any type of plant. I think the media uses the same process to influence all stereotypes and have people act upon them. They plant the idea of the stereotype in society’s ideology and then it slowly starts to grow and grow until it reaches a commonplace status. Because then this societal pressure is assumed to be normal, people act upon it.

            

                                                                            photo taken from krystallee27.wordpress.com

            The cover of Tough Guise has a picture of a young boy with a ferocious look on his face and flexing his muscles. Obviously Tough Guise is trying to expose this media stereotypes. Tough Guise is trying to show this affect of cultivation on young boys. They see the media portrayal of what it means to be a “man” and grow up thinking that men need be strong and violent. This little boy pretending to act tough shows that cultivation can affect younger generations so they grow up with these stereotypes being considered normal.

            

Hegemony

In his article on hegemony, Lull argues that hegemony is a concerted effort by the upper class to push values and ideals on the lower class that seem commonplace. In my mind, I think of hegemony as an exaggerated combination of gate keeping, agenda setting, and framing which helps me interpret the media coverage by FOX News.

According to the actual definition of hegemony, media outlets control this flow of subconscious ideas by selling them as commonsense, thus going unnoticed. Obviously, media is not random; certain people control what is displayed (gate keeping) and frame how one should perceive this display. The fact that one class of people can control these two dominant aspects of media causes me to believe that they can push its personal beliefs onto society and can affect its ideology. 

Fox News Compilation on Barack Obama

This is a video compilation of FOX News footage bashing President Barack Obama. Even though this was not compiled by Fox News, the footage is legitimate. With my view of hegemony, because Rupert Murdock can control what to cover and how to cover news on his network, he is pushing his conservative views and Obama criticism onto his audience. Thus he can affect how some of his viewers think and react, all by being a gate-keeper, agenda setter and framer, of the news. 

                                             picture is from teenagegraffiti.com