​​​ •Reflective paper on media and journalism in the UAE with special emphasis on legal and ethical issues •Reflective Group presentations cum report on the issues, constraints and opportunities for ethical media practices •Essay on Best practices in media and journalism •Media Monitoring Journal Does a fish know it's wet?" influential cultural and media critic Marshall McLuhan would often ask. The answer, he would say, is "No." The fish's existence is so dominated by water that only when water is absent is the fish aware of its condition. So it is with people and mass media. The media so fully saturate our everyday lives that we are often unconscious of their presence, not to mention their influence. Media inform us, entertain us, delight us, annoy us. They move our emotions, challenge our intellects, insult our intelligence. Media often reduce us to mere commodities for sale to the highest bidder. Media help define us; they shape our realities. A fundamental theme of this book is that media do none of this alone. They do it with us as well as to us through mass communication, and they do it as a centralÑmany critics and scholars say the centralÑcultural force in our society. COMMUNICATION DEFINED In its simplest form communication is the transmission of a message from a source to a receiver. For more than 50 years now, this view of communication has been identified with the writing of political scientist Harold Lasswell (1948). He said that a convenient way to describe communication is to answer these questions: • Who? • Says what? • In which channel? Chapter 1 Mass Communication, Culture, and Mass Media 5 • To whom? • With what effect? Expressed in terms of the basic elements of the communication process, communication occurs when: Straightforward enough, but what if the source is a professor who insists on speaking in a technical language far beyond the receiving students' level of skill? Obviously, communication does not occur. Unlike mere messagesending, communication requires the response of others. Therefore, there must be a sharing (or correspondence) of meaning for communication to take place. A second problem with this simple model is that it suggests that the receiver passively accepts the source's message. However, if our imaginary students do not comprehend the professor's words, they respond with "Huh?" or look confused or yawn. This response, or feedback, is also a message. The receivers (the students) now become a source, sending their own message to the source (the offending professor) who is now a receiver. Hence, communication is a reciprocal and ongoing process with all involved parties more or less engaged in creating shared meaning. Communication, then, is better defined as the process of creating shared meaning. Communication researcher Wilbur Schramm, using ideas originally developed by psychologist Charles E. Osgood, developed a graphic way to represent the reciprocal nature of communication (Figure 1Ð1). This 5 x A source sends a message through a medium to a receiver producing some effect Encoder Interpreter Decoder Decoder Interpreter Encoder Message Message Figure 1-1 Osgood and Schramm's Model of Communication. Source: From The Process and Effects of Mass Communication. Copyright © 1954 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with the permission of the University of Illinois Press. 6 Part 1 Laying the Groundwork depiction of interpersonal communicationÑcommunication between two or a few peopleÑshows that there is no clearly identifiable source or receiver. Rather, because communication is an ongoing and reciprocal process, all the participants, or "interpreters," are working to create meaning by encoding and decoding messages. A message is first encoded, that is, transformed into an understandable sign and symbol system. Speaking is encoding, as are writing, printing, and filming a television program. Once received, the message is decoded; that is, the signs and symbols are interpreted. Decoding occurs through listening, reading, or watching that television show. The Osgood-Schramm model demonstrates the ongoing and reciprocal nature of the communication process. There is, therefore, no source, no receiver, and no feedback. This is because, as communication is happening, both interpreters are simultaneously source and receiver. There is no feedback because all messages are presumed to be in reciprocation of other messages. Even when your friend starts a conversation with you, for example, it can be argued that it was your look of interest and willingness that communicated to her that she should speak. In this example, it is improper to label either you or your friend as the sourceÑWho really initiated this chat?Ñand, therefore, it is impossible to identify who is providing feedback to whom. Not every model can show all aspects of a process as complex as communication. Missing from this representation is noiseÑanything that interferes with successful communication. Noise is more than screeching or loud music when you are trying to read. Biases that lead to incorrect decoding, for example, are noise, as is newsprint that bleeds through from page 1 to page 2. Encoded messages are carried by a medium, that is, the means of sending information. Sound waves are the medium that carries our voice to friends across the table; the telephone is the medium that carries our voice to friends across town. When the medium is a technology that carries messages to a large number of peopleÑas newspapers carry the printed word and radio conveys the sound of music and newsÑwe call it a mass medium (the plural of medium is media). The mass media we use regularly include radio, television, books, magazines, newspapers, movies, sound recordings, and computer networks. Each medium is the basis of a giant industry, but other related and supporting industries also serve them and usÑadvertising and public relations, for example. In our culture we use the words media and mass media interchangeably to refer to the communication industries themselves. We say, "The media entertain" or "The mass media are too conservative (or too liberal)."What Is Culture? Culture is the learned behavior of members of a given social group. Many writers and thinkers have offered interesting expansions of this definition. Here are four examples, the first three from anthropologists, the last from a performing arts critic. These definitions highlight not only what culture is but also what culture does: Culture is the learned, socially acquired traditions and lifestyles of the members of a society, including their patterned, repetitive ways of thinking, feeling and acting. (M. Harris, 1983, p. 5) Culture lends significance to human experience by selecting from and organizing it. It refers broadly to the forms through which people make sense of their lives, rather than more narrowly to the opera or art of museums. (R. Rosaldo, 1989, p. 26) Culture is the medium evolved by humans to survive. Nothing is free from cultural influences. It is the keystone in civilization's arch and is the medium through which all of life's events must flow. We are culture. (E. T. Hall, 1976, p. 14) Culture is an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbolic forms by means of which [people] communicate, perpetuate, and 10 Part 1 Laying the Groundwork develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life. (C. Geertz as cited in Taylor, 1991, p. 91) CULTURE AS SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED SHARED MEANING Virtually all definitions of culture recognize that culture is learned. Recall the opening vignette. Even if this scenario does not exactly match your early mornings, you probably recognize its elements. Moreover, all of us are familiar with most, if not every, cultural reference in it. Survivor, Rolling Stone, McDonald's, Nike, Dilbert, Matchbox 20Ñall are points of reference, things that have some meaning for all of us. How did this come to be? Creation and maintenance of a more or less common culture occurs through communication, including mass communication. When we talk to our friends; when a parent raises a child; when religious leaders instruct their followers; when teachers teach; when grandparents pass on recipes; when politicians campaign; when media professionals produce content that we read, listen to, and watch, meaning is being shared and culture is being constructed and maintained. FUNCTIONS AND EFFECTS OF CULTURE Culture serves a purpose. It helps us categorize and classify our experiences; it helps define us, our world, and our place in it. In doing so culture can have a number of sometimes conflicting effects. Limiting and Liberating Effects of Culture A culture's learned traditions and values can be seen as patterned, repetitive ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Culture limits our options and provides useful guidelines for behavior. For example, when conversing, you do not consciously consider, "Now, how far away should I stand? Am I too close?" You just stand where you stand. After a hearty meal with a friend's family, you do not engage in mental self-debate, "Should I burp? Yes! No! Arghhhh. . . ." Culture provides information that helps us make meaningful distinctions about right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, good and bad, attractive and unattractive, and so on. How does it do this? Obviously, through communication. Through a lifetime of communication we have learned just what our culture expects of us. The two examples given here are positive results of culture's limiting effects. But culture's limiting effects can be negative, such as when we are unwilling or unable to move past patterned, repetitive ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, or when we entrust our "learning" to teachers whose interests are selfish, narrow, or otherwise not consistent with our own. U.S. culture, for example, values thinness in women. How many women endure weeks of unhealthy diets and succumb to potentially dangerous surgical procedures in search of a body that for most is physically unattainable? How many men (and other women) never get to know, Reflective paper on media and journalism in the UAE with specific emphasis to legal and ethical issues