CMMNA100 Schedule Change

Now that the University has cancelled our fall break, your class schedule has been revised.  Check it out here.  Note that the most recent version of this online schedule will be indicated by the date in the upper-right-hand corner of the schedule page.

CMMNA100 Tuesday, Sept 09 class

A reminder:

As noted in your online syllabus, our CMMNA100 class for Tuesday, Sept 09 will be devoted to a lecture by Dr. Bob Thomas on environmental communications. This lecture will take place in Miller 114.

Class reminders.

>> All students should read the posts below and follow the instructions in those posts. I hope to see you all next Tuesday. <<

RE media coverage of Gustav:

This is my last online comment on this topic before, hopefully, we return to class next week and can discuss this further. Earlier, I mentioned that I wanted to listen a bit more before coming to some conclusion about the nature of the coverage of the storm offered by WWL radio during Katrina and during Gustav. I was very interested in seeing how WWL radio covered this storm for two reasons: because, during Katrina, WWL radio was for a long time my only source of information about the city (so I listened a lot) and because WWL radio is currently the de facto public information station for the New Orleans area.

My verdict is thumbs down on their Gustav coverage.

The WWL radio coverage has been, as I earlier suggested, almost completely dominated and increasingly slanted by the station’s goal to provide a platform for every possible government official and/or psuedo-politico who wears a badge or carries a card or flashes a smile. And all government and pseudo-government officials – from FEMA reps to Entergy spokespeople to parish sheriffs – have taken advantage of this opportunity to effectively drown out any discouraging word. The number of calls from citizens on the ground and in the soup continues to be in the smallest of minorities compared to the constant stream of self-congratulatory back-slapping we hear from anyone with a title.

In fact, Garland Robinette’s rant against NOPD Chief of Police Warren Riley earlier this week was the exception that proved the new rule of WWL radio announcers sucking up to the powers to that be. Since you may or may not have heard this subsequently over-publicized incident (it made the Times-Picayune), here’s what happened:

When New Orleans Police set up road-blocks (the police insisted they were “check-points”) on Wednesday in order to check ID’s prior to allowing people to re-enter Orleans Parish, traffic immediately began to slow as some people were stopped, turned around, and not allowed to enter. Learning of this check-point process, Garland went semi-ballistic during his morning talk show over the wrongness of it all and, particularly, about the wrongness of the New Orleans police department, which was the only organization in the state of Louisiana imposing such strictures on returning residents.

Soon, these NOPD road-blocks/check-points were revoked – no doubt in part to the quick pressure that Garland and his cronies were able to exert – and all seemed semi-well, until Chief Riley himself called Garland’s show to bemoan how “the media” were exaggerating the wrongness of the check-point procedure. Rather strangely and rather passively, Garland let the Chief have his on-air say (another example of air-time being wasted in the service of self-congratulatory hutzpah) and moved on to other things.

Then, about ten minutes later, even more strangely, Chief Riley called again to explain his version of events further. Again, air-time was given freely and, this time, Chief Riley explained how all the media stories and comments about the wrongness of it all were, in fact, politically motivated. (This version of the events of Wednesday morning was also being offered briefly elsewhere by Mayor Nagin.) So, as we listened to the curious conspiracy theory being offered by Police Chief Riley on WWL radio, Garland snapped. He berated the Chief’s argument, the Chief hung up, Garland continued to go off, a few damns and hells were tossed about, and WWL radio went to a newsbreak about Palin and the RNC.

I think the importance of this incident is not that it was the single instance I heard in which any of the on-line “talent” at WWL radio (I’m going to leave their news team out of this) had the gall to actually question the politically motivated bs they were being fed by local poobahs. Rather I think the importance of this incident is the subsequent reception it received in the New Orleans community — and on WWL radio.

First of all, it made the news. And second, there was a decidedly apologetic attitude taken by WWL radio staff after the fact. The necessity of WWL radio personalities maintaining a “good” relationship with government officials, maintaining a “friendly” and “up-beat” attitude, and maintaining an aura of authority and knowledge without, in most cases, having any first-hand knowledge of what was going on made Garland’s position and comments seriously out of step with station policy.

In other words, WWL radio during Gustav, much more so than during Katrina, has had little to no dissent.

Too bad. Because there have been many, many opportunities for reasonable dissent to emerge.

There is a good reason why the news media (the “press) are sometimes called “the Fourth Estate” and conceived as rightly separate from government. For instance, one of the functions specific to news media is its “watchdog” function. WWL radio functioned well – as well as could be expected — in that watchdog role during Katrina.

Not so this time.

lecture notes

CMMNA100/CMMNA400

COMBINED LECTURE NOTES Sept 04

 

Communication contexts

 

• interpersonal
• small group
• large group (organizational)
• mass

What is “mass society” and what is its relationship to the industrial revolution?

 

Paradigms of mass society

 

• Structural functionalism
• Social conflict
• Social evolution
• Symbolic interactionism

What is the function of mass communications in mass society?

  

Early communication theorists and theories

 

• Harold Lasswell (magic bullet model)
• Carl Hovland (individual differences)
• Paul Lazarsfeld (social categories / social relationships)
• Kurt Lewin (small group communications)

What is the “magic bullet” model?

How did the magic bullet model evolve from the 1920s to the 1950s?

 

CMMNA400

ADDITIONAL LECTURE NOTES Sept 04

 

Early sociologists and concepts

 

• Auguste Comte (division of labor)
• Herbert Spencer (laissez faire social policy)
• Ferdinand Tönnies (gemeinschaft / gesellschaft)
• Emile Durkheim (anomie)

What impact did early sociology have on mass communication theory?

 

Online classes.

For CMMNA100 and CMMNA400 students: Remember, as stated in your syllabus, your *online* attendance during this week is required and will be verified by noting whether or not you leave a reply to the appropriate message below. In the discussion of how well (or poorly) the media have fared in covering Hurricane Gustav, take a look at this site, which is an attempt to find alternative ways of delivering information to the public.

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My latest comment: If you’d like an example of how corporations use the media (again, WWL radio is my example) for their own purposes, take a listen to any current interview with an Entergy/Cleco spokesperson. Each and every one of these interviews will begin, regardless of the question being asked, with the spokesperson reciting a litany of statistics describing about how many citizens are without power and how many citizens have had their power restored. Normally, these statistics will be at a global (state or city) level; these statistics may or may not be recent. This litany will be interspersed with reminders of how hard workers are working and how everyone is trying to get everyone’s power back as soon as possible. There will also be some mention of how large the impact of the storm was and a final and obligatory mention of the Entergy/Cleco website — where, always, “more” information can be found.

Upon subsequent and more detailed questioning, the spokesperson will be unable to answer questions about which neighborhoods are currently with and without power and will be vague about when power might be restored to any specific location. And that’s it. This same interview template will be repeated again and again with the interviewer serving little function other than to hand the microphone over to the spokesperson and then take that microphone back when the spokesperson has finished with what is, essentially, a free public advertisement for their corporation.

Here are some questions that should be asked in these interviews (but never seem to be):

• Why isn’t there a mechanism to determine, house by house, who does and doesn’t have power? Surely the energy company has this information; why can’t the public access this information?
• Likewise, why isn’t there a mechanism to determine, bucket-truck by bucket-truck, where all the energy workers actually are? With gps positioning and easily mashable google maps, wouldn’t such an automatic tracking function be useful to the corporation as well as informative to the public?
• Are the company websites ramped up to service the extra load (hits) they receive during weather emergencies? If the websites are unavailable — due to over-use, paucity of call-in lines, etc. — then why can’t the “more” information that those websites contain be made available through other means (e. g., through the company spokesperson)?
• Why, when restoring severely damaged lines, do these restorations place the power lines in the same position of vulnerability as before? Wouldn’t it make sense to IMPROVE the power grid when restoring it after a storm?

I’m sure you can think of other questions of interest to you as well. But it does seem, does it not, that these Entery/Cleco interviews best serve the purposes of the corporation rather than the purposes of the public? If so, then why do the interviewers — on WWL radio and elsewhere — allow these “interviews” to occur in this way? Couldn’t the news people read/post these global statistics themselves? Who, in this instance, is in control of the information function of the media?

CLASSES for Thursday, Sept 04/08

Hurricanes and nature function and move more quickly than government and political officials are either willing or able to function and move.

I am currently in Laurel, Mississippi, with only dial-up free (Netzero) internet access available.

No later than Friday of this week, I will post online, on this blog, the essential features of the lecture I was scheduled to give to CMMNA100 students during the (now cancelled) Thursday, Sept 04 class. These lecture notes will also be of interest to the CMMNA400 classes.

Since the general topic for both CMMNA100 and CMMNA400 classes during the first few weeks of class is mass com theory and research, I see no reason not to combine a brief online discussion of these topics for these two classes. Therefore, the current assignment for both classes is this: In a reply to this message, briefly analyze the national media (CNN and The Weather Channel are two examples) coverage of Hurricane Gustav. In this analysis, compare, if you are able to do so, the local media (WWL radio is an example) coverage of the storm.

My own analysis is that the abysmally poor nature of the national media coverage has changed little since Katrina (though I was impressed by some of the new-fangled — Microsoft/Google Earth — graphics on CNN). The local coverage, while more accurate and immediate, was marred by a over-emphasis of crowd control and a corresponding de-emphasis of actual information about what was going on.

Gary Tuchman on CNN, for instance, probably should be fired for wrongly characterizing the (disputed) “overtopping” of the Industrial Canal levees as a “breach.” But he probably won’t be — just as Mayor Nagin will apparently suffer little for earlier and ludicrously describing Gustav as a “900-mile wide storm,” which could, in virtually any other circumstance, be called an ignorant (and perhaps viscious) lie.

Meanwhile, WWL radio and its talk-show hosts attempting to act as journalists resulted in, as in previous weather emergencies, an unquestioning acceptance of whatever local “authorities” wish (or hope) the public to believe. For instance, one of WWL’s pressed-into-jounalistic-service-talk-show-hosts, “Spud,” was strongly supportive of local police officials harassing the poor Joe who might be, just like you and me, simply interested in driving from one place to another inside the newly forbidden zone of where Joe and his family live and work. While forbidden to Joe, of course, this same zone is simultaneously free and open to any journalist, political relative, cop adjunct, CLECO exec, or Spud crony who is willing to except with a wink and a nod the perk of unrestricted movement from the good ole boy/girl who gives it to him. In these winks and nods, of course, there is no acknowledgement nor consideration of the ramifications of a police officer using his/her “discretion” to determine whether or not you have a “good reason” to be in your own neighborhood.

***

What examples of media coverage would you isolate as either particularly well done or particularly disturbing?