Roaring Radio- Entertainer of the 1920s

     It is safe to say that conventional radio today is nowhere near as popular as it used to be back in the early 20th century. The combination of television, satellite radio, and internet make conventional AM/FM radio much less significant than it was in the 1920s. Back then, radio was a technological revolution that changed the shape of entertainment as well as the advertising and news industries. The emergence of the radio as the main source of entertainment and news all happened because of one technological invention called the vacuum tube in 1906 by a man named Lee de Forest. 

     Before the invention of the vacuum tube, "wireless telegraphs" (later to be called radio) was already being used to keep contact with oceangoing ships across the atlantic that could not reach telegraph lines. They used Morse Code to communicate, which involves dots and dashes representing each letter of the alphabet to relay messages back and forth. It was not until 1906 when the vacuum tube- which could transmit and receive sound, voice, and music- opened up the possibilities for conventional use radios by the public. 

1920's Radio Clips

(Soundboard with various broadcast clips from the 1920's)

   After World War I, public interest in radio began to rise. Companies began to see the potential of radio starting with Frank Conrad and the Westinghouse Company in 1920. Once he set up the first regularly scheduled radio broadcasts in the country, radios started being sold more than ever to the public so they could tune in. Other companies began seeing the various uses for radios, particularly advertising. Entertainment shows could sell advertising spots to companies during broadcasts, the news industry could broadcast around the nation much faster than print news, and schools and churches could use radio to broadcast educational shows to a large audience of listeners. The possibilities were almost endless, and radio soon became the biggest industry of the age. The true TV of it's time, radio industries flourished off of music shows, news broadcasts, and educational lectures, all of which wouldn't have been possible without the development of the vacuum tube in which sound itself was made transmittable.  

            What would be your first reaction if your friend said they walked downtown last night by them self? I know my first words would be something along the lines of “did you get mugged?” or “why would you do that you could have been killed???” Is this a normal reaction? Why couldn’t I have said, “Oh that’s nice how was it?” or “did you see anything interesting?” I mean thousands of people walk downtown by themselves every night and some might have some trouble but it shouldn’t be the first thing you’d assume was going to happen should it? I’ve just grown accustomed to assuming bad things are going to happen if you are alone at night walking, well pretty much anywhere. This is probably because I’ve seen so many shows and movies about people being mugged or attacked or worse, I just immediately assume it’s going to happen every time.  This phenomenon is called the cultivation theory, and it creates a pseudo-reality that changes our views of the real world based on things we see in the media.

            Cultivation theory is the concept that things we see in movies and television (such as downtown muggings, shootings in bad neighborhoods, or crimes committed by certain groups of people) have a direct effect of how we view those situations in real life. For example, ever since 9/11 films and TV shows have taken the opportunity to make middle eastern people be seen as terrorists and villains, which causes people in real life to assume that all middle eastern people are potentially dangerous which is obviously not true. The same goes for crime shows that have situations where people get kidnapped or assaulted, especially when the person committing the crime is a minority. People viewing these shows may begin to believe that these events happen more often than they actually do, or that certain races are more dangerous than others, creating an unnecessary yet real sense of fear for an exaggerated occurrence.

            Cultivation theory doesn’t always have to do with fear however. Some of the most common examples have nothing to do with fear at all. Instead they deal with things like how men and women should look or behave in society. We’ve all seen ads depicting women in scandalous clothing, looking sexy and ready for action, and then we look down and see they are holding something like a golf ball or can of beer. Like this commercial:

Is this how women were meant to look? Apparently all women in society must have huge breasts and be ridiculously attractive, while men are in power (all but one committee members are men, as well as all but one lawyer). After watching those women for two minutes you almost forget that the commercial is for website domain names, and I for one never knew that people thought a website for naming websites was sexy before. For men, the cultivation theory isn't usually exampled in steamy ads (except sometimes for clothing), but more often shown in how men behave in movies and TV shows. The movie Tough Guise focuses on how media depict men and how it can effect how men in real life act because they want to fit into this unreal identity of “manliness”. The strong, macho, testosterone-filled, always ready for a fight guys in action movies create a sense of false reality that guys might begin to associate with lest they be ridiculed by other men who have already fallen into this unfortunate trap:

Blood, gigantic muscles, protecting a helpless women; all characteristics of a “real man” while at the same time showing minorities as villains. The continuous depiction of racial stereotypes, sexy women and tough men reinforce the cultivation theory and further create an untrue reality that people adopt into their real life, thereby making it into a real reality, not because of experience, but simply because someone else told them it was true.



"Man":

Framing in Media

How do frames work? Generally speaking they usually add a nice border to a picture or painting for visual effect. But more specifically what is contained within a frame? Often it is something that somebody wants seen. When a photographer or painter frames a picture, they are framing something that they obviously want people to see. Framing in the media works the same way and a clear example of media framing is often found in political campaign advertisements.

Framing is the act of including/removing certain facts or details in a story or video to shape the viewers' interpretation of whatever the story is depicting. For example a reporter could frame a story about worker unions either positively or negatively. If they were to frame it positively, they could report about the good things unions do, such as fight for workers' rights. A negatively framed report of unions could talk about their method of striking as a poor form of protest that hurts the economy and the community. Either way all the facts are not included, and in a framed story, one side is depicted while the other is avoided even though both may be true.

As before mentioned, political campaigns are usually very good examples of media framing, especially if they are attack ads. These attack ads will pick on every flaw of an opponent and try to get viewers to think of them negatively. The tone in the ads make all the facts seem terrible, even though they do not explain why they are bad. They also do not include any positive things the candidate did because they want the audience to completely associate them with bad emotions. An example of this political media framing is this advertisement by Meg Whitman against opponent Jerry Brown during the 2010 race for Governor of California:

This ad uses the words "fail" and "failure" more times in 60 seconds then I have ever seen before. This negative framing is a way in which Whitman tries to get voters to see Brown as an enemy of the state and a horrible politician. She frames what she thinks are his negative acts in politics and not only deliberately leaves out any positive things he has done in his career, but does not explain why he did the things he did and if they were even bad or not. She just knows that voters hate spending and know that job cuts are bad, so she uses that to her advantage, not needing to explain herself.

Framing is done all over the media, in advertisements as well as stories in newspapers, online reports, and even television shows. This way framers can show the audience exactly what they want them to see, and leave out everything else.