Communication & Media Studies Editing Services

Media, perception and culture

Media studies is unavoidably intertwined with psychology, as it is steeped in how the perception of media influences people, including topics such as propaganda, advertising, and both modern and historical sociology.

Much can be learned about cultural norms and practises throughout the ages by examining historical documents, from explicit examples such as how golliwogs were depicted in media such as Enid Blyton’s books to more subtle nods to behaviour considered acceptable at the time such as Sherlock Holmes’ prolific use of laudanum.

Media in historical context

Propaganda has a had dark history and gained extremely negative connotations since its use in Germany before and during World War II to promote the Nazi party through propaganda films such as Triumph of the Will however, it was originally a neutral term that simply referred to any information that presented a purely subjective view of something to encourage a particular perspective of it by its recipients. This definition would make Disney movies a form of propaganda, as they present a sanitised view of events such as the colonisation of the Americas by Europeans and of life in Victorian England.

Much like propaganda itself, how ideas are phrased and communicated is of paramount importance, which is why researchers will often employ a communication & media studies editing service to ensure that their work is grammatically correct and readable.

Modern society can gain remarkable insights into common social mores of the past through examining how characters acted and interacted in media such as Shakespeare’s plays. Comic characters such as Falstaff were typically used to keep the people in the cheaper areas entertained while the high drama played out, often by making digs at people in positions of power who have otherwise been completely forgotten over time. Reading old accounts of how people assumed the future would look can reveal great insights into what they deemed important and what they considered to be society’s priorities.

George Orwell imagined various dystopias in which the state had total control over people’s lives and thoughts, whereas Isaac Asimov believed that science would progress to the point where humanity could escape the petty squabbles of politicians and create empires that would stretch across galaxies. Compelling stories can be derived from such works about the authors’ worldviews and the societies in which they grew up through proper analysis of their respective creative outputs.

Advertising and audience engagement

Another aspect of media studies is developing an understanding of how to engage people with content and help develop their interest in subjects typically considered dry such as history; the musical Hamilton has provided a new means of engaging with US history and has thus reignited many people’s interest in the subject.

Studying advertising can give us insights into both how advertisers view the societies in which they live and the subtle (or sometimes rather prominent) methods they use to convince the public to purchase their product or engage with their service. Various tropes such as the “nine out of ten doctors recommend…” demonstrate how advertising executives believe that people respond to statistical data and information presented by authority figures and can present insights into consumer psychology, while old advertisements for cleaning products were always targeted at women, again revealing aspects of both advertiser bias and reflecting the societal norms of the time.

Furthermore, advertisers have started gamifying adverts in recent years to encourage consumers to engage with the brand (Terlutter & Capella, 2013); the methods they use and their effectiveness are worth studying to determine when and where such practices overstep ethical boundaries and how they can be remediated or combatted, if necessary. This is a lively area of research on both sides and the ethics are constantly debated, thus researchers often need to rely on communication and media studies editing services to ensure that their work is of sufficient quality for speedy publication and dissemination, as the long term effects of tactics such as gamification are hotly debated and could have serious ramifications.

Advertisers will rarely go against stereotypical depictions of consumers when deciding how their work should be targeted because they want their products to appeal to as wide an audience as possible; thus, the adverts they produce can allow researchers to extrapolate the perception of social circumstances with remarkable accuracy, if analysed with care and attention. Products such as beer and cars are typically advertised to men and chocolate and cleaning products to women, not even necessarily out of explicit misogyny, but because advertisers believe that doing so will create the largest possible return on the investment (Stemple and Tyler, 1974).

Such topics must be handled with care and attention because certain media outlets are prone to picking up on investigations into such topics as the basis of various campaigns to increase sales without paying due care and attention to the science behind their assertions (this process itself could present a rich vein of research potential); therefore, researchers must ensure that what they have written is exemplary science, clearly worded and approachable. This often requires the assistance of a communication and media studies editing service, as they have the requisite expertise to handle such work, leaving researchers to ensure the data is correct and complete.

References

Stemple, D., & Tyler, J. E. (1974). Sexism in advertising. The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 34(3), 271-273.

Terlutter, R., & Capella, M. L. (2013). The gamification of advertising: analysis and research directions of in-game advertising, advergames, and advertising in social network games. Journal of Advertising, 42(2-3), 95-112.