Diffusion of Innovation Theory

Our meme pokes fun at meme star ‘Bad Luck Brian’. As we all know, the iPhone 6 has not been released yet. That being the fact, at first we portray Brian as a “super early” adopter by being the first to get his hands on the new smartphone. It turns out that he ends up being a laggard the very next day due to the launch of the “brand new” iPhone 7. Our meme captures the inability of smartphone companies to provide any drastic changes to the current models that we have now. Ultimately we set out to capture our societies’ rapid yet unnecessary approval of newer models without really knowing the improvements that have been made. We all set out to be early adopters, but ultimately we all turn out to be laggards just like Brian with the constant updates to our devices.

Medium Theory

 

Marshall McLuhan adopted the phrase “the medium is the message” . The phrase as does the meme, illustrates the effects mediums have on the human senses. The meme above gives a sort of revelation aspect to our theory.  The medium theory is the idea that one should observe the media in the ways that each new form of medium disrupts traditional forms of communication and reshapes our understanding of social life.  The medium is the message that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and actions. The meme basically assumes that the relationship between the message and the medium is complementary in both shaping audience’s perception and senses. If the message is the medium, than the medium can also be the message. 

Agenda Setting Theory (Example)

Agenda setting theory was drafted by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw in 1972 when through survey and interview research they discovered a correlation between issues voters believed were important and those the mass media gave prominence in news coverage. This led them to assert that the media do not reflect reality. Rather they filter and shape it, setting the public agenda by what stories they report on. This meme (also see: http://memegenerator.net/instance/45605657 )  shows "success kid" congratulating himself on the fact that his daily tweets reflect both what the twitter sphere and the press considered the most important stories of the day. However agenda setting theory argues that media only highlight a few stories each day and so that “agenda” makes the public to perceive those are the most important, which may not be the case.

Welcome to COMM 350

Welcome to COMM 350! This course explores different theories of mediated communication processes, their effects, and schools of theory to consider the influence and roles they play in social science research on media and mediated processes. This blog will host content related to the Group Theory Research Project which is part of this course. Students will work in groups to investigate a specific theory and its application.

 As part of the presentation component groups will create meme that offers clear synthesis of theory they are studying to be posted to class blog by 5pm on day of their scheduled presentation with 100 word explaining how it connect or summarizes the theory’s meaning.

For the case study each group will post a 100-200 word summary of their group report. This should include an illustration of chose case study and relevant hyperlinks to sources or examples. It must be posted to class blog by 5pm on day of the presentation.