Mass Media Models

Scholars have devised numerous ways to dissect& categorize the mass media. This includes:

     1. Hot-cool model;

     2. Entertainment-Information model;

     3. Elitist- Populist model;

     4. Push-pull model.

Each offers insight; but all of them have shortcomings in explaining the mass media.

Hot-cool model

This model is derived from the thinking of Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan. He although sometimes even contradictory & confusing saw,

Books, Magazines, movies & newspapers as hot media. Because: These media require a high degree of thinking to use.

To read a book, you must immerse yourself to drive anything from it. The relationship between medium & user is intimate.

Movies as a hot medium: they involve viewers so completely. Huge screens command the viewer’s full attention, & sealed, darkened room shut out distractions.

Television as cool, they can be used with less intellectual involvement & hardly any effort.

Entertainment-information model

Define media based on the content: entertainment or information.

v Newspaper always considered as information medium.

v Audio recording & movies are considered entertainment medium.

v Books, television, magazine, radio both inform & entertain.

Elitist-populist model:

An ongoing tension in the mass media exists between advancing social & cultural interests & giving broad segments of the population what they want.

v Classical music verses pop music

v The prothom Alo verses Manabzamin

v Nudes in the art books verses Playboy magazine

Elitist model:

Serious media content appeals elitist people

 They feel the mass media have a responsibility to contribute to a better society & a refinement of the culture.

Populists model:

 Entirely oriented to the marketplace. Populists feel the mass media are at their best when they give people what they want.

Pull-push model:

The communication revolution introduced by the world Wide Web in the mid-1990s required a new model to understand new ways that the media were working.

The new model classifies some media as passive. pull media, which you steer :  radio & television, book, movies.

Push media:

Propel messages at you whether invited or not.

A recorded voice in a grocery store aisle that encourages you to buy a certain brand of corn flakes as you passes by the cereal display.

Pull media:

You have control of seeing the ad.

Push media, Advertiser has control to make ad seen.

No model is perfect, which means push media and pull media are extremes that rarely exist in reality. Most media messages are push-pull hybrid.