Introduction to Communication Studies: The Receiver and the Perspective of Meaning

From 65438 to 1960s, under the influence of semiotics and literary studies, communicators paid more and more attention to the construction and deconstruction of information. The idea imported from literary theory-any communication information is a readable text.

The most influential semiotic model was put forward by Ferdinand de Saussure, who believed that a symbol consists of two parts, the first part is the form of the symbol, that is, the symbol object, and the second part is the concept it expresses, that is, the meaning. For example, love, black characters on a white background and fonts are all forms of symbols, and the content it expresses is love. A traffic red light symbolized by a red light means that you must stop driving. This process is called' giving symbolic meaning', but the meaning may vary from person to person.

Symbolists believe that there are two kinds of meanings: literal meaning and extended meaning.

Literal meaning refers to the explicit meaning of symbols, while implicit meaning is the second meaning, which is the connotation or related meaning represented by superficial meaning.

Considering different people's backgrounds, people get different meanings and reactions, that is, the multi-semantic information of information.

Some symbols have a wide range of consistent meanings, as shown in the figure below.

Literally, this is a painting with a white background and black background. On the implicit level, most people realize that this represents the ladies' room.

The Jacobson model of 1960 combines the concepts of sender, informer and receiver of communication theory. Every piece of information is related to its external things, that is, context, in which a red light stands for stop and a love letter stands for love.

Traditionally, it is considered that the audience is passive, the same and large, and it is impossible to select and shield information. It is an indicator of traditional advertising for the information client to study the arrival of information and how many people it touches, and high communication volume is an important consideration of advertising. All-media theory has changed the concept of information dissemination. Roger Clausse 1968 put forward the hierarchical theory of information transmission, describing the activities of different levels of audiences: the first level only provides information, for example, I publicize the election to the audience through email; The second layer is the ability to receive information, and how many viewers have mailboxes; The third layer is the acceptance of information, such as how many people actually received my email; The fourth layer is information registration, how many people have checked the mail; The internalization of the fifth layer of information, how many people have read the information and thought about it. The activities on the fifth floor are of the highest value to advertisers, so market research institutions and scholars are interested in information activities and want to know how and why people choose specific information in consumption.

Compared with the traditional passive audience paradigm, the following are new ideas: 1) people choose to be audience members; 2) They consciously decide which media to use; 3) They want to meet the needs related to the media; 4) Because they want to be told, entertained and spend their leisure time, they belong to a certain group; 5) They are active audiences and pay attention to their media-related needs. This theory was studied as early as 65438+1940s, and was rediscovered in 1960s with the title "User &; Satisfaction theory, many scientists go deep into this theory and pay attention to the needs of the audience. They mainly try to answer

The study of use & satisfaction shows that people actively look for media to meet their own needs. They can actively open certain information or block some information. Brain scientists found that because we constantly accept sensory input, in order to make the world around us meaningful and avoid being overwhelmed by a lot of information, we are very suitable for shielding useless input and selecting and amplifying meaningful data at the same time. This process is unconscious. For example, in a crowded party hall, we will block the noisy background, ignore the boring topics, focus on the people and conversations we are interested in, and enlarge the dialogue with these people. But when others mention our own names, we are likely to hear them.

Hastov and Cantril learned about this phenomenon in 1954, and asked students from Princeton and Dartmouth to count the number of fouls in their football matches. Both sides think that the other side fouls more. They watched the same game, but they handled the information differently, filtering out the unwanted information (the team fouled) and amplifying the information consistent with their own preset. This discovery led to the so-called hostile media effect.

1982, Vallone, Ross and Lepper studied this phenomenon, showed the same news to students who supported Palestine and students who supported Israel, and asked them to count the times of supporting and opposing Israel and Palestine in the news. Both sides believe that the media is partial to the other side. Students who support Israel find that there is more anti-Israel information and less pro-Israel information.

These studies show that there are perceptual differences among the same audience. They see, listen, remember and process information at different subconscious levels. This process is called cognitive bias. We think we watch news or sports games objectively, but our consciousness is already filtering, making choices and shielding useless information.

Cognitive bias is manifested in our subjective processing of information, and sometimes our cognition will be distorted. Cognitive bias is a very effective and healthy phenomenon to some extent, because people can't handle all inputs in a balanced way, so it is very effective to make decisions subconsciously. Although we tend to regard prejudice as a limitation, we can also regard it as cognitive agility because it speeds up the processing of information.

Cognitive dissonance (1957) is a psychological theory, which explains how people deal with conflicting Festinger, thoughts and beliefs. For example, Rogge thinks he is well-read, and his friends talk about the classic book War and Peace. Everyone has read it except Rogge, his self-awareness (I am a well-read person) and the conflict with reality (all his friends have read it except him). This theory predicts that Rogge will take the following three measures to avoid the discomfort caused by cognitive disharmony: 1) reduce the importance of an uncoordinated factor; 2) adding new elements to his beliefs to bridge the disharmony; 3) Change his view on conflict factors. Specifically, he will a) who cares that I am a well-read person/not reading classics will not make me illiterate; B) Or he can add new elements to his beliefs to make the picture harmonious: a person who has read many books of poetry should be surrounded by people who have read many books of poetry, so it is not surprising that these people have read War and Peace. C) Or he can put it another way: Obviously, I'm not a big reader/War and Peace is a well-received literary work.

This theory explains how people balance belief and reality, which sometimes leads to great changes in ideas. A classic example is the sour grape psychological fox in Aesop's Fables.

Summary:

When we process information subjectively, there will be some cognitive deviations, which is an effective health phenomenon to some extent. Subconsciously filtering and screening the endless stream of information helps to process information quickly.

Cognitive dissonance theory explains three kinds of reactions when people's self-cognition conflicts with reality:

Elm (Extended Likelihood Model, 1979 Petty and Cacioppo) theory explains cognitive approach from another angle, and information can be processed through central or peripheral paths. When the receiver adopts the central path, he considers the information extensively, and the information flows through different processing steps. Peripheral path is a shortcut, which is usually activated by peripheral clues, such as humor, credibility of news sources, fear or desire.

This theory tells me that the attempt of persuasion should consider the tendency of the audience, such as 1) the motivation to understand information, and 2) the ability to understand information. If the audience has two points, then the center path should be adopted to persuade Tom to buy a car. Tom is willing to consult all kinds of websites and brochures to get information about cars. He has the ability to know this information, so he should take the central route. In this case, sexy models at the auto show have little effect on Tom's persuasion. And if the audience doesn't have 1 or 2, then the peripheral path, such as ted, should be adopted. At this time, the sexy models at the auto show have a great persuasion effect on Ted.

Cognitive proximity is sometimes not the result of the best logical reasoning, but it saves a lot of time and energy.

Summary:

ELM explains cognitive approach from another angle, and information can be processed through central or peripheral paths.

People are well adapted to choose the information they want to process.

-consciously choose a specific media.

-unconsciously processing recent information through cognition.

According to everyone's personal background, experience and interests, we all have our own cognitive style. Research shows that mass media have different influences on individual cognitive styles, and perhaps our information filters are not unique and private. Some information passed through our filters because the media told us it was important and we should accept it and deal with it.

The media tells us what information is important, who is important and where important things happen. The topic of the media determines the topic of the public.

After 1970s, there was a lot of knowledge about agenda setting, such as starting. Scholars have noticed that when people are asked to evaluate political candidates by using media propaganda indicators, this is a start. If the media pays attention to the extinction of giant pandas, people will be influenced by this event to judge political candidates. They will evaluate political candidates by asking such questions: what is politician X's view on the extinction of giant pandas, and how does Ta intend to solve this incident; If the media pay more attention to the economy, people's judgments will be linked to the economic situation; Film reviews will also affect people's judgment on movies. If the film reviews judge the uniqueness of a film, the audience will introduce this indicator into their own judgment process, but if the film reviews pay more attention to story clues, the audience will pay more attention to this point. The media didn't persuade people to think about this and that, but they did influence the audience's thoughts in the evaluation.

Of course, some things are completely ignored, which involves another study called Gatekeeping, which describes how the media filtering process works and why some information will pass through this door and some will be blocked out. Those media fields decide which topics pass the door and which do not, and they are called gatekeepers. Information has been filtered once before it reaches individuals.

This week, we discuss different aspects of information structure and processing. Reception theory connects these contents together. Stuart Hall is one of the pioneers of reception theory. He is concerned about how the receiver receives information and gives it meaning. Influenced by semiotics, Hall believes that communication is a negotiation between sender, text and receiver. The sender encodes the information and the receiver interprets the meaning of the information. Hall calls this process decoding. Readers rely on their own knowledge, experience and cultural background to negotiate with the text, and the negotiation process may produce different results, that is, the principle of ambiguity of information: information can be translated and understood by different people in different ways. Contrary to this principle, information is synonymous, and information has only one meaning. Umberto eco used the term open/closed text. Some words leave people more room for translation. Mathematical formulas are relatively closed words, while abstract paintings are more open. Similar portraits are more open than photographs, and abstract paintings are more open. These are all relative.

Hall puts forward a coding and decoding model, and the receiver has different decoding methods. For example, Ross is a conservative politician. He made a manual to promote the use of nuclear energy instead of fossil fuels. Ross wants people to vote for her in the election.

Jack read the brochure. If Jcak can internalize the information and decode it with Rose's will, he will recognize Rose and vote for her. This process is called priority reading. According to the reception theory, when Jack and Ross have the same cultural background, for example, Jack is more sympathetic to the Conservative Party. If the sender and the receiver have the same cultural background, the preferred reading will occur more frequently.

2) If Jack interprets the information unilaterally, that is, through negotiation, Jack agrees with the point of view, but chooses to vote for others.

3) The third way to decode information is that Jack vetoed it completely, read Ross's brochure, but totally disagreed, thinking that Ross was completely wrong and would not vote for her, which is against interpretation. In this case, Ross and Jack may have very different cultural backgrounds.

Reception theory holds that communication is the carrier, reflection and producer of culture. Information construction theory and cultural theory are complementary, and cultural theory will be put into practice next week.