Welcome to Comms 411

Welcome to Comms 411, Spring Term 2012. During the course of this term our goal will be to explore the effects of mass media on institutions and individuals within modern society. In this class, we will explore the effects literature and relevant effects theories by answering questions about how the media influence our lives. The goal of this class is to create an ongoing dialogue among class members that will give us the opportunity to engage in lively debates and discussions.

I will use this blog space to communicate with you and to initiate our discussions. Please log on to this blog to obtain your class preparation assignments several days in advance of our class meetings. I will pose a series of questions that will require you to engage in some fieldwork and then write about your experiences. Please post your response (which should be in the form of a short essay of about 300 words or so) as a comment to my posting. You will have the opportunity to read what your classmates are writing and I would encourage you to respond to their comments as well. Please post your comment no later than 3 p.m. on the afternoon of the day prior to our class meeting. All of this is explained in the Course Syllabus, which is available through the BYU Learning Suite.

I'm looking forward to learning with you this term.

May 2 Notes

I'm going to add more to this obviously. But for now I'm including a clip from "To Kill a Mockingbird" that I will use to illustrate the ideas of perceptual vs. conceptual processing and concrete vs. inferential processing. These concepts have to do with cognitive development issues and will help us respond to our question for this class period.

Here's the link:

To Kill A Mockingbird

Let's start by talking about the process of "viewing." What does it mean to watch TV? What happens when we watch? What cognitive and affective processes are involved?

Cognitive Complexity--based on experience and knowledge; the depth of knowledge or understanding we have of a particularly idea, concept, process, or skill. As we develop cognitively, and as we age and experience life, we become more cognitively complex. Children, obviously, are less cognitively complex than adults.

So, how does this address our question for the day?

Remember the brain takes time to develop both physically (the brain is not fully developed physically until we are in our early 20s) and cognitively. Children go through the process of cognitive development in their childhood years and early teens. The goal is to acquire what we might call meta-cognitive skills--the ability to see things from multiple perspectives, to make inferences and identify the motivations of others, the ability to role play, and the ability to reflect critically on our own thoughts and actions.

When it comes to understanding media effects, we must remember that children have not developed cognitively and therefore experience media very differently than adults.

Here are some issues to address:

Perceptual vs. Conceptual Processing

Children tend to focus on external cues--colors, sounds, images--rather than grasping the basic concepts of what is being presented. Piaget illustrated this with his classic experiment.


Concrete vs. Inferential Thinking

Children are more concrete in their thinking. They are very good at giving the chronology of events, but they often fail to provide the meanings or motivations behind the events themselves. They don't understand motive or plot, or character development, the way adults do.

Is "Hoosiers" really about basketball? What is it actually about?

Hoosiers clip


Determining Probability vs. Plausibility

Students often use the example of Stephen King's "It." Is it "plausible" that a bad clown could exist. Yes. But what is the probability that I might encounter this clown. Very low, not very probable. For children, things they believe are plausible also become equally probable.


How does this influence a child's ability to differentiate between fantasy and reality? Does this explain how and why what is shown on TV to them takes on a different dimension or meaning?


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