TV ratings Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

TV ratings - Coursework Example For example, if channel CBS shows Criminal Minds at 10pm and has a rating of 25 then, according to Nielson, 25% of the household audience is watching the program. In addition, an individual needs to find the market share of a program as it is the estimate percentage of the number of households who have television and are watching the program. For example, if channel ABS airs the program Dance with the stars at 8.00pm and has a market share of 40 this means that 40% of the people watching TV at that particular time are watching the same program. Moreover, to have spot trends in the market help Media Managers identify audience problems. For example, if channel fox airs master chef at 7.00am, which has weak ratings, then there is a possibility that the ratings could recover after some time. This is because the program may be aired at a time when the target audience is not available. Lastly, tracking numbers of people helps to know if people are watching the program. The Nielson report captures viewers of all age groups. However, it may be difficult to know the actual numbers between women and men ages, as much as these numbers matter most to advertisers. The result is that the audience splits due to the gender and age groups, therefore the number of people watching certain programs reduce significantly (Beville, 9). The target audience for most of the top ten programs attracts young families. This is because programs such as modern family, is a family program and the parents together with the kids can watch the program that is suitable for all family viewing. In addition, programs like criminal minds and the big-bang theory allows all members of the family to watch. 18-49 years is the target age of most of the top 10 programs. I feel the target audience for the top 10 shows attracts families because, the programs are friendly to everyone in the family and parents do not have to censor worst scenes,

Theories of Globalization in Communication Essay

Theories of Globalization in Communication - Essay Example Subsequently, the impact of the mass media and communication on the culture of people is also presented. The impact is surmised and given in the conclusion of the paper. A number of theories have come about linking the communication, specifically media, the culture and the society at large. While the media was thought to have cast an alter personality who would be forced to behave in a specific way. The altercast theory do have supporters and some of the behavioural traits generated go in line with this. A development of the altercast theory is the cultivation theory which says that the thought processes in the people who are watching the media can be cultivated over a period of time. Like a plant or stalagmites on the roofs of the cave, they are slowly and steadily built over a period of time. This also meant that the presence in the media is needed and continuously too. The domestication theory, on the other hand, looks at the entire society to be a network of households; a network that runs on cultural, social and technological creations. Miller (1988) defined the concept of domestication theory into four phases; from appropriation, objectificati on, incorporation and conversion starting from the creating a product to objections to its usage and then on to incorporating into the daily lives. Incorporation would also involve converting the technologies and products to suit the cultural style of the locale. This also includes the environment. The final stage is when the household converts itself in line with the trends that is happening in the society and tries to be in line with the outside world. While the gatekeeper theory, pushes forward the much observed, head of the family concept, where one of the members of the family, the mother or the wife wields more strength in deciding on what gets bought (Golding & Harris 1997). What kind of food and clothing is worn by the people is decided more by them rather than by the other members of the family. A person who wants to push need to ensure that the deciding person is the one addressed in their media ads. Gatekeeping concepts have been developed subsequently, so that many organisations even use gatekeeping in their organisational setup (Mattelart A 1998). Even these decisions by the gatekeepers are decided based on the mental models that they have in their mind. Most of the decisions made by the people depend on the mental pictures that they have of the product in their mind, according to Thussu (2000). He also stressed that reasoners build models of truth rather than models of false. Therefore, it is easier for people to make m istakes during such model building exercises. Modernisation theory came up in three waves. Modernisation invariably brings in the western culture under focus and its spread in the world. The first wave of the theory accepted the influence of modernisation with the western culture and technologies at its core. It dominated the entire world and was part of the globalisation agenda. During the second wave that happened in the 1970s and 1980s, the cultural impacts were more widespread. But at the same time, there were very few supporters of the western influence in the cultures of the world. Modernisation was noticed and continued to happen but there was opposition even among the western society, specifically the

Nonverbal Communication In Social Psychology Psychology Essay

Nonverbal Communication In Social Psychology Psychology Essay The most important thing in communication is hearing what isnt said.- Peter F. Drucker cited in Goman,2008 page 1. This states that spoken language and non verbal signals need to simultaneously exist and interact with each other in order to give the receiver a fully understanding of what is been said. Non-verbal communication is the ability to transfer, receive and decode messages to one another without using spoken or written language instead we take a specific body posture or facial expression to denote a particular feeling or intention. Non-verbal behaviour can be both consciously and unconsciously (M .Argyle, 1988, page 4). Non-verbal behaviour became acknowledged in the social psychological field in 1872 by Charles Darwins work, where he suggested that high intelligence animals shared the same facial expressions with humans C.Darwin (1872 cited in P.Ekman,1973, pages 12,13). This essay will discuss the importance of non verbal communication in the social psychological field. There are different types of kinesics such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, and body postures. It is said that the eyes are the most powerful means of communication we posses after words (G.R.Wainwright, 1985, page 5) that is because our eyes help us seek information, display attention and interest, show respect and provide feedback during speech Argyle (1965, cited in Wainwright, 1988 page 9). For example when people avoid looking others in the eyes, it seems that they are trying to hide something or that they are lying. Neuro-Linguistic Programming researchers, for several decades, believed that when a person looks up to their right corner of their eye they are more likely to be lying, whilst a glance up to their left it indicates that they are telling the truth. However, a later on study of two professors; R. Wiseman from  Edinburgh University and C. Watt from Hertfordshire University has shown that that theory was wrong; there was no evidence of a correlation betwe en lying and eye movements. (R. Wiseman, C. Watt et al. PLoS ONE, 2012; 7).Instead avoiding eye contact could clearly indicate nervousness or shyness. Moreover, in some countries eye contact signifies respect and straightforwardness whereas in others it is seen as rude and disrespectful; for instance in European cultures, a certain amount of eye contact is required, but too much makes many people uncomfortable. When greeting a Chinese, it is best to avoid prolonged eye contact as a sign of respect and deference (E. T. Hall, M. R. Hall, 1990,page 14). Furthermore, effectual eye contact is also a significant feedback machine that makes the speaking situation a double dissociation since it certifies that others are listening and that the listeners are appreciated for their attentiveness. (G. R. Wainwright,1985 , page 11) However, when people feel bored they usually do not make eye contact with the person they are talking to and may start searching for anything nearby to fidget with -th eir cell phone or objects around the room, for example. These actions are perceived as signs of boredom and lack of interest. (G. R. Wainwright, 1985, page 7) Closely relevant to eye contact are facial expressions which posses the most dominant and primary form of body language. Facial expressions must have obtained evolutionary importance; since it would have been evolutionary growth for our antecedents to have been chosen for biological reproduction and natural survival on account of their ability to make facial expressions C .Darwin (1872 cited in P .Ekman page 13). Additionally, it has been said that people can produce around 20000 different facial expressions Birdwhistell (1970 cited in Argyle,1988 page122). This mosaic of facial expressions is universal and sums up to six basic principles; happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust and surprise and when these fundamental emotions are mixed together they produce an array of expressions Ekman (1982 cited M. Argyle, 1988 pages 121,122). Furthermore, the importance of facial expressions is also shown by the ability that people have on making almost infallible critics about someones persona lity, intelligence, character in the first few minutes of meeting them (G. R. Wainwright, 1985, page 23). However, a psychologist had run an experiment, in which the subjects had to chose if that person in the picture was innocent or not, and found out that a significant number of people were biased to judge someone as a criminal by their facial features (G.R. Wainwright, 1985, page 27). In sequence of these findings it suggests that people sometimes misinterpret what they are seeing without having any specific evidence. Also, considering that facial expressions are tight together with emotions, sometimes they can be very similar with the attitudes that we give towards other people; voluntary and involuntary, paradigm being angry is an emotion, being angry towards someone is an interpersonal attitude(M.Argyle,1988, page 85) . Intermittently, people have to look back in order not to disobey that fine line between acceptable and unacceptable attitudes; for example liking and disliking someone are emotions although the expression of disliking someone is often restricted by social rules (M. Argyle, 1988, page 85).Furthermore, facial expressions are inevitable to occur thus at intervals they come in contrast of what is been felt and what their expressions demonstrate (M. Argyle, 1988, page 78,127 and G .R .Wainwright,1985, page 26) .Researches has shown that micromomentary expressions might be captured through cameras but are too emphemeral and momentary for most people to realize them; For example a person might say that they are happy to see someone and may even smile at them, but this false attitude may be showed by a micromomentary expression like disgust. (G .R .Wainwright, 1985, page 26) Another huge subdivision of Non-verbal Communication is gestures. Gestures include body movements that chaperon spoken language, especially with the use of hands; some of them are waving, pointing, using the fingers to indicate numerical amounts and are enormously substantial in the social psychological field since they give emphasis and interpret what is been said. A study has shown that most vocal conversations are accompanied, regulated and modulated by kinesics; like motion of the head, hands etc Bull and Conelli (1985, cited in M. Argyle ,1988 page 107) . Moreover, some gestures are known as illustrators of the verbal context because they imitate shapes, physical objects or movements. Dittman (1972) argued that illustrators appear at the establishment of a verbal conversation in order to manifest what will be contained in the verbal aspect. It was also verified by Butterworth and Beattie (1978) who their findings showed that gestures prefaced the phrase which was associated with them by an average of 800 milliseconds. Although, McNeil and Levy (1982) corralled otherwise, saying that illustrative gestures had the same possibility to happen prior of a phrase or later on (M .Argyle,1988, page 107). Furthermore, another research has demonstrated that emphasis can be denoted not only by the changes of pitch or loudness of someones voice but also by hand or head movements; Mehrabian (1972) had found that speakers who wanted to convince and allure the hearers used gestures and head-nods more frequently . However, Argyle (1983) disagreed with the above statement saying that the capital reason that the transmitter looks at the receiver is to collect information and reactions about what has just been said, in the form of head-nods, facial expressions ,gestures and so on (M.Argyle,1988,page 109).In addition, gestures are not universal, they are culture specific, and can have an entirely different meaning from one culture to another ; so giving a thumbs-up or a peace sign might mean a greeting for some countries and some others might take it as highly offensive signs Morris (1979 cited in Wainwright,1985 page 45). Last but not least, another research has shown that people are perceived as more active, warm and acceptable when they tend to use more nonverbal movements than the ones that use less; those are seen as more logical, cold and analytic (G.R. Wainwright,1985 page 48,49) In conclusion, non verbal communication in some purposes is more powerful and consequential than verbal language itself mostly because it can take different forms; such as gestures, eye contact, facial expressions. That illustrates emotions and attitudes to other people without using any verbal communication. (M. Argyle, 1988 page 308). It is evident that most communication happens without speech and that the spoken part of conversation is actually much less than we think (M.Argyle, 1988,page 1). When verbal and non-verbal communication blend together, the second one might either strengthen or curve the prior one (M. Argyle, 1988,page 106).

Victorian Gothic Literature: Scientific vs. Medieval Thinking Essay

Victorian Gothic Literature: Scientific vs. Medieval Thinking      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Creatures of the night have always held a fascination and horror for people in all cultures. The English fascination with sensational and gothic literature came to a peak, after slacking slightly following the Romantic period, in the late Victorian period with such works as Dracula, The Strange Adventures of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Picture of Dorian Gray. The literate populace avidly devoured this type of literature. While most publishers merely churned out serial horror stories en masse, such as Varney the Vampyre, many serious writers used this genre as a means to force their audience to think about their beliefs. Serious Victorian Gothic literature plays on the fears and emotions of the era, an era that was especially fearful since their beliefs had been ripped out from under them, largely by contrasting modern science with medieval superstition and belief.    The Victorian era was similar to our own in that it was a time when people weren't really sure what was true or what they believed. As this prayer, believed to have come from the Victorians shows, " 'O God - if there is a God - save my soul - if I have a soul' " (Houghton 22). New theories about the age of the earth had demonstrated that something was out of kilter with the bible, since the earth seemed to be older than the biblical account would show. Darwin had gone one step further and shown that man hadn't been created but evolved through natural selection. A generation was growing up in a culture that had had the rug of its beliefs pulled out from under its feet. The main difference between the Victorian sense of doubt and our post-modern doubt is, "faith in the existence of u... ...completely destroyed by his dabbling in alchemic science.    Much of Victorian Gothic literature plays to the Victorian doubt in what they believe, especially as concerns science and what is largely assumed to be medieval superstition. By playing on these fears, authors are able to create stories that are horrifying on several levels. First of all, the action that goes on in the book is enough to make the readers skin crawl. However, the authors go farther and use their audiences natural fears and doubts to create a story that is sensational on all levels.    Works Cited Davenport-Hines, Richard. Gothic: Four Hundred years of Excess, Horror, Evil and Ruin. North Point Press: New York, 1998. Houghton, Walter E. The Victorian Frame of Mind. Yale University Press: New Haven, Conn, 1957. Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Penguin Group: New York, 1992.

Unemployment and Welfare

This essay will let you know the different opinions of federal policy issues involving welfare causing conflicting debates between national, state, and local government and how these conflicting issues relate to federalism. Federalism is â€Å"A government system where power and authority are shared by national and states governments, with the ultimate authority derived from the people.With that been said this essay will also describe the history of TANF and discuss debates about the pros and cons of TANF Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and the problems they are intended to solve or improve and the effectiveness of them both. (Levin-Waldman, 2012). When people think about welfare they normally think of Medicaid, WIA Work Investment Act, WIC Women, Infants, and Children and of course AFDC Aid to Families with Dependent Children now TANF, and HUD Housing and Urban Development.They tend to view it as the federal government giving away the countries money and the taxpayer’ s hard-earned dollars to people who cannot support themselves. Majority of people do not like the idea regardless of what and some are sympathetic to the poor and think you should help if you can and are financially stable. They may wonder why they cannot support themselves, why do not they work or go to school, why they are having children they cannot take care of. These reasons are among other things are how people see and view welfare in today’s society no matter what.The reasons could vary from a person that lost a spouse, or they could have been laid off or fired from their jobs, or maybe their hours were decreased as there could be many other reasons, but there are programs to help people get back on their feet for example, training seminars, workshops, help with schooling and finding jobs as well as day care assistance, nutritional programs, finding housing and other needs. The welfare reform debate has remained very emotional, because it touches on the most sensitive of societal issues: work, family, sex, abortion, personal responsibility, and community integrity.Welfare reform has become a very important topic in today’s world from fundamental questions about quality of life and how to allocate personal and public responsibilities. We are not sure as a society whether economic security for children is more important than providing clear consequences to parents who fail to play by the rules. We argue whether individual that are not responsible or societal barriers are at the root of welfare dependency.Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the nation's cash assistance program for poor families with children, has not played much of a countercyclical role during the current recession. As unemployment has risen, TANF caseloads nationally have grown much more slowly and state TANF caseloads have not tracked state unemployment growth. Program rules and financing structures limit the responsiveness of TANF in a downturn. As TANF reauth orization is considered, this brief details some relatively small changes that could improve the program's effectiveness in future recessions (Welfare Reform Act of 2011).Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the signature program of welfare in the United States and the focal point of discussions about reform, was terminated in 1996 with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. This legislation effectively replaced AFDC, Emergency Assistance, and the JOBS program–and the open-ended federal appropriations that supported them–with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant. In effect, the federal government began turning responsibility for welfare back to the states.Pros- Welfare has the benefit of providing much-needed food, medical care and money to citizens who qualify to receive it. Since taxes fund welfare, it redistributes wealth across the population. Welfare also prevents even further social proble ms by allowing some recipients to maintain their standard of living. For example, unemployed workers who receive an unemployment benefit may be able to keep their homes despite the loss of income, preventing a foreclosure and possible homelessness.Cons- The biggest disadvantage of welfare is its cost to the local governments that administer it. Even with federal funding, states feel the burden of welfare in each annual budget. Welfare may encourage some recipients not to seek work, since a rise in income would disqualify them from receiving free benefits. It is also an opportunity for fraud, which occurs whenever someone supplies false information to receive welfare benefits without truly qualifying

Philips Matsushita

PHILIPS / MATSUSHITA STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS In response to Harward Business School Case 9-392-156 PHILIPS N. V. Philips should pursue transnational structure by establishing integrated network of distributed and interdependent resources and capabilities in its core competencies: consumer electronics and lighting. Philips has developed local responsiveness through its decentralized structure of national organizations (NO). This structure has a great advantage in being able to sense and quickly respond to the differences in the local markets. As a result product development is a function of the local market conditions. Philips had developed 8 major R&D facilities throughout the world that are highly specialized. They have been a success introducing such products as first color TV in its Canadian NO, first stereo TV in Australia, and first TV with tele-text in the UK. However these inventions were not shared with the rest of the NOs in Philips because of the lack of communication between NOs and headquarters. For example, Philips’ Beta videocassette format wasn’t shared with other divisions as the strategically valuable invention, as a result North America Philips rejected this invention outright choosing instead to outsource and sell Matsushita’s VHS tapes. In order to prevent these strategic mistakes, the main role of the headquarters should be scanning of business activities across countries and identifying resources and capabilities that might be a source of competitive advantage for other companies in the firm Philips’ local responsiveness causes poor global efficiencies that need to be improved throughout the company. Transnational solution will help to retain local responsiveness as local companies search for new competencies that enable them to maximize profits in particular markets. International integration is realized when specific country’s operations develop unique competencies and become suppliers of that particular product in the market for the entire corporation. If one division develops valuable, rare, and costly to imitate R&D capabilities or products in its ongoing business activities, that division could become the center for R&D and manufacturing for the entire corporation in that activity or product. In conclusion, Philips should pursue transnational structure, where the main role of corporate headquarters is to scan business ctivities across countries for resources and capabilities that might be a source of competitive advantage for other geographically diversified companies of Philips. This structure will help Philips to be both globally efficient and respond to the local market successfully. MATSUSHITA ELECTRIC Matsushita should pursue completion of transnational structure by establishing integrated network of distributed and interdependen t sources of technical knowledge in the organization and changing the flow of information from top down to even exchange between headquarters and divisions. Past efforts to develop technological capabilities abroad have failed due to the company’s highly centralized R&D structure in Japan. Matsushita have transferred significant resources to local R&D centers, however the delegation of many responsibilities and framework of R&D came from headquarters in Japan. This philosophy was not well accepted by engineers of the acquired local companies because of the excessive functional control from the headquarters. As the result of central R&D dictatorship overseas companies were not able to develop innovative capability and entrepreneurship. In order to restore Matsushita’s profitability and recreate pioneering spirit of R&D, more control should be delegated to local operations’ R&D. Operations in different countries should be thought of as experiments in creation of new core competencies. Local R&D should search for new competencies on local markets in order to maximize profits in their particular markets. Corporate headquarters, on the other hand, should constantly scan different markets and competitors across different countries for new resources and capabilities that might be a source of competitive advantage for other divisions in corporation. If one of Matsushita’s divisions develops valuable and costly to imitate product that could b e a source of competitive advantage, the information about the innovation should be communicated back up to the headquarters. Headquarters will evaluate the idea and will assist with implementing of the innovation. Consequently, that division could become the center of manufacturing technology development for the entire corporation. In conclusion, Matsushita should change its role of corporate headquarters form dictating decision making to support incubatory ideas from local companies and search for new competencies in the market. This will reflect transnational structure goal Matsushita is trying to achieve and boost creativity and innovation on the local level. Copyright  © 2002, Sergei Vasilyev, University of Nevada Las Vegas, MBA To request permission to reproduce material, e-mail [email  protected] edu