Communication Media And Related Demographic Variables

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2.7 Communication media and related demographic variables
Communication as an integral part of all the society, helps sharing of knowledge, socializing, entertaining and gaining consensus through persuasion for the people involved (schramm, 1977). In the process of communication, the role of the mass media is immense. Communication Media emerge and converge with the existing ones in the environment, and with the emergence of new media and convergence of media technology, the patterns of media usage of people inevitably changes (Mangleburg&Bristol, 1998) which puts the knowledge about people’s media use on a moving end.
Media studies often show attitudinal and behavioral differences among societies and cultures in the use of media (Bonfadelli, …show more content…

Such effect is examined in the literature with different approaches; sociological, semiotic, psychological and socio-psychological. The sociological analysis focuses on the community, as a system governed by rules, norms, and social behavior. Sociology examines how advertising influences opinions, attitude and behaviors of individuals and social groups (Moingeon, in Corvi, 2010). In contemporary society, there are two opposite sociological perspectives in line with advertising function. The first perspective maintains a positive approach to advertising and its role to organize economic & social relations and harmonize social behaviors, make people adhere to common values, and help them to better live together. The second perspective is critical in that it deems advertising to generate mass consumption. In this regard, advertising may involve poorly differentiated symbolic values that may adversely affect a communities’ living condition (Friedman, in Corvi, …show more content…

These are identified as anything that conveys meaning, e.g., words, images, gestures, etc. semiotics studies focus on the problems of the encoding, and more generally of the codes used. The object of investigation is the message itself containing different signs that can be interpreted according to a pre-established intension, without reference to the consumer and the influence on the consumer behavior. Studies on the effectiveness of advertising focus on the language or the graphic image of the message. They analyze the quality of the message from the view point of its construction, its presentation and the place of the communication process (Mick, 1986; & Scott, 1994). The impact of the message on the recipient is a minor problem in the process of the message evaluation. This is a critical curb of the semiotic approach in marketing. This approach is useful especially in the context of advertisement creation, thus, considering audience characteristics is the necessary concomitant for the right practice.
Communication in general and advertising in particular were treated by psychologists from the view point of motivations of recipients, because they determine the perception of the latter (Mittelstaedt, 1990). The focus here is the motive that derives consumer behavior. So the purpose for the advertising creator is to identify the reasons of consumer behavior, in order to identify the most effective message by removing

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