What we see in media such as television is the final product of a complex process. A set of extensive activities and based on internal rules and regulations of media organizations, programs are produced by different people with different tastes and opinions. Therefore, paying attention to the problem of the audience and the conscious choice of television programs by them is an important issue that has not been addressed so far, and the lack of this type of investigation is felt in the research of the television field. In this research, the researcher tries to investigate the role of media management styles of television productions on the cognitive selection of programs by the audience, as well as determine the level of benefit and trust of the audience towards this medium (television).
Keywords: Media management, television productions, cognitive selection, audiences.
Introduction
Today, media organizations are considered one of the most complex and studyable organizations in the world. At the same time, the special role of management in media organizations is becoming more and more visible every day, and while theorizing and modeling in this field has been done less, on the one hand, the role and position of media organizations In the basic, social, economic and cultural life of governments, it has turned them into one of the great sources of power in societies, and on the other hand, the use of new and innovative management methods, the function and efficiency of complex media organizations every day It is more difficult than before. Despite many similarities with other knowledge and educational organizations, the media organization has characteristics that make it stand out from the rest.
Diffusion of types of knowledge instead of producing and distributing a specific type of knowledge, activity in a public domain which makes it available to all members of the society and influencing a larger number of people and devoting more of their time to themselves. Therefore, media communication, compared to speech and interpersonal and group communication, by going beyond the limitations of time and place and the production and dissemination of meaning, symbols and signs, in a wide range to the formation of the limits and voids of the symbolic environment that we live in it helps. In media organizations, in addition to implementing such general management principles, in order to achieve their goals, due to the type of operation and the complexities they have in their organizational system, they must also set the specific style of managers as a work model, hence the managers in It is one of the four management styles (authoritarian style, liberal style, social responsibility style and developmental style).
In addition, the media organization is not an independent unit from the society, so it must be from one side to the other economic, political, social and cultural organizations establish balanced and reasonable communication and on the other hand, to know the opinions of the audience and pay attention to the correct methods of persuasion. The media (sender) and the audience (receiver) are two sides of the same scale, which have mutual influence on each other directly, in case of quantitative and qualitative changes in each of these two, and the opposite party is also changes. In other words, the absence or reduction of the audience directly affects the performance of the media and on the other hand, the reduction of the quantitative and qualitative level of media production also affects the quality and the quantity of the audience has a negative effect.
Nowadays, while the media (in this research, television) has three roles of information, awareness, education and training, entertainment, it should be mentioned that in some cases, although these approaches are different. In many cases, they have the ability to cover each other in order to serve the fundamental feature of the media, i.e. audience and message transmission.
The main issue of this research is, what role does the media management of television productions play in increasing or decreasing the cognitive selection of programs by the audience?
In other words, this research tries to determine whether there is a meaningful relationship between the independent variable of media management and the dependent variable of the cognitive selection of television productions by the audience?
Media management
The growth and expansion of media in the last few decades in terms of number and diversity, the issue of competition and audience attraction went hand in hand so that these organizations need managers, policy makers and strategists who can lead the field of competition by formulating and implementing efficient management strategies. to be Under such conditions, attention to the management aspect of mass communication organizations became the focus of experts' attention, and thus an academic field called media management was born. Media management on the other hand it is the product of the specialization of management science and at the same time it has the characteristic of being interdisciplinary. As a scientific and academic discipline, media management studies media organizations and the strategic management of these large and complex organizations, and like other management trends, many principles and concepts of public management are used here, hence management The media organization takes on certain differences and complications from some aspects, which are naturally originated from of this organization. Having a complex, variable and uncertain activity environment, along with some other characteristics such as difficulty in measuring effectiveness, makes management work difficult in these organizations. The existence of diversity and the possibility of choice in the content of communication is a prerequisite for democratic participation, each individual or group must be able to form opinions based on comprehensive information and diverse messages and opinions and have the opportunity to share these opinions with others. And the development of diverse communication means should provide more opportunities for real and direct participation of people in communication processes.
The seven-stage process of media management has a cyclical state, meaning that the results of the effectiveness evaluation stage are used in determining media policies and programming priorities.
Media management styles
Media management style, that is, the method and format used by a media and based on it deals with the production of content and media services, various theories have been proposed so far regarding the styles of media management, which due to the few sources in this regard and the fact that four styles are examined in this research, we only Authoritarian, liberal, social responsibility, and developmentalists will be raised:
Authoritarian theory
The term authoritarian was coined by Seibert, and is still quite appropriate. This theory refers to the state of the press in the first societies in which they appeared, which were mainly monarchies, and in which the press was subservient to the power of the government and the interests of the ruling class.
The basic principles of this theory including:
- The media should not take action that weakens the existing power or disturbs the order.
- The media must always and ultimately be subservient to the established power.
- The media should avoid insulting the majority or dominant moral and political values.
- Censorship to enforce these principles can be justified.
- Unacceptable attack on authorities, deviating from official policy or insulting moral principles should be considered a crime.
- Journalists or other media workers within their media organization have no independence.
On the other hand, in the information age book by Castells regarding the authoritarian style and the challenge of globalization
Historically, the control of information and entertainment, the control of opinions and perceptions has been the lever of the government's power, which should have been perfected in the age of mass media. Consolidation of ownership, flexibility and global spread of technology, autonomy and diversity of media, in fact, in many countries, the government has surrendered to these challenges.
Liberal theory
The liberal product of the 19th century is based on the values of romanticism. This point of view says that the absolute scale, origin and space of human value lies in the human person, thus individual freedom is of the first degree of importance. No one can tell you what to do, what to think and what to believe.
The liberal school says there is no such thing as society, you cannot see that we are all people, this (liberal) approach is also known as methodological individualism. The liberal theory, which is another name for the libertarian theory of Seibert and others, has its roots in the emergence of the press free from government control in the 17th century and is still considered as the basic principle of legitimacy for the press in liberal democracies. The principles and values of this theory are the values of the liberal-democratic government. Belief in the superiority of the individual, wisdom, truth and progress and finally the sovereignty of the will of the people.
The basic principles of this theory are:
- The media must be free from any kind of pre-determined censorship by any third party.
- The act of publication and distribution should be free without the need of any permission by any individual or group.
- Attacking the government, authorities or political party (as opposed to attacking individuals and treason or threats Security) is not traceable, even after the fact.
- There should be no pressure to produce any media content.
- No restrictions should be imposed on the information collection by lawful means for publication.
- Media messengers must be able to have a considerable amount of professional independence within their organization
Theory of social responsibility
The theory of social responsibility has a wide scope of application, because it includes several types of private media, government and public institutions. Therefore, the theory of responsibility should combine independence with commitment to the society, and its main foundations are the assumption that the media have basic duties in the society. Especially in relation to democratic politics, media ownership and control is a kind of service to the public.
This theory has to reconcile three relatively incompatible principles; Individual freedom and choice, media freedom, and the media's commitment to society. This theory leans toward two main types of solutions to resolve potential inconsistencies: first, the growth of public but independent institutions to manage broadcasting—a development that in turn increases the scope and political strength of the concept. It expands social responsibility, and secondly, the further development of professionalism as a means of realizing higher standards of practice, while maintaining the principle of media self-management.
The basic principles of social responsibility theory are:
- The media must accept and fulfill certain obligations regarding the society
- These commitments can be fulfilled by setting high standards or words of awareness, truth, accuracy, objectivity, and engagement.
- To accept and implement these obligations, the media must act within the framework of the law and self-governing institutions.
- The media must avoid anything that may lead to crime, violence, social disorder or aggression against minority groups.
- According to the first principle of this theory, society and the general public have the right to benefit from high standards of practice. So the intervention to ensure the supply of these public goods is justified.
The style of social responsibility is considered to be a kind of hybrid system, which is prevalent in Western Europe and in which there is extensive involvement of people in broadcasting, and several institutional methods make private media accountable to society. In this style, which is under the support of public power and control, the weight of content production is heavier in favor of cultural, educational and informational content.
Developmental theory
The normative elements of this theory are against dependence, foreign domination and authoritarianism. It respects the independence and cultural identity of each particular national society and is largely in favor of democratic and popular responsibility and thus supports cooperative communication models.
These positions are, on the one hand, generalization of the same principles of independence and opposition to authoritarianism, and on the other hand, an effort to recognize the need to realize development through the means of cooperation and cooperation.
The basic principles of social responsibility theory are:
- The media should accept and fulfill the tasks of positive sector development based on established national policy.
- It should be possible to limit the freedom of the media based on the economic priority and development needs of the society.
- The media should give priority to the national culture and language in their content.
- Media messengers and other media workers in the field of their duties, i.e. collecting information and broadcasting, while having responsibility, should also have freedom.
- The government has the right to intervene or limit media activities for the benefit of development goals, and in this way, the use of direct control and subsidy tools is justified.
Theoretical and conceptual model of research
The theoretical model of this research is a conceptual model because it shows the effectiveness of the audience's cognitive selection from different styles of media management. In other words, in the questionnaire that we prepare according to the characteristics of independent variables (four styles of media management) and dependent variables (cognitive selection of programs), after collecting and analyzing statistics from the audience, we must conclude that The tendency of the audience who have a cognitive choice is close to which of the four media management styles, and which management style leads the audience to recognize and perceptually choose the programs. In this research, he collected information with the help of survey and questionnaire method. In this research, 300 teenagers from the city of Babylon city in Iraq country were considered as the statistical sample of the research. The Conceptual and theoretical model of this research is shown in figure 2.
Research method
In this study, survey method and correlation method are used and t-test and f-test and multiple regression analysis collected and analyzed the relevant data of dependent variables are: scores of audience expectations from television in terms of needs
The five elements and the expectations of the audience met through television in the dimensions of those needs and the data related to the prediction variables, including the scores obtained from individual characteristics, social base economic and religious-cultural characteristics and the extent and manner of their use of new media. In this research, according to the nature of the subject and the variables and how to conduct the research, a survey method has been used.
| Measurement of individual variables | |
| Variable | Criterion |
| Age | 20 to 60 years |
| Gender | |
| Job | Occupational class |
| Education | Level of education |
In the measurement section of the macro variables, it is designed based on the 5-option Likert scale.
The general form and scoring of the questions are as follows:
| Completely disagree | Disagree | No idea | Agree | Completely agree | General format |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | scoring |
With the evaluation method mentioned above, for options that are completely opposite to the Likert spectrum, value of 1, and for strongly agreeing options, a value of 5, considered an ordinal scale or the rank becomes a spatialy scale that allows the researcher to use parametric statistics and structural equation modeling.
Results and Discussion
In according to the data, out of 388 respondents, 12.9 percent or 50 people have no opinion about the role of social responsibility style media management and 87.1 percent or 338 people agree with the role of social responsibility style media management in television productions. Also, 15.5 percent or 60 people have no opinion about the role of development-oriented style media management and 84.5 percent or 328 people agree with the role of development-oriented media management in television productions.
In addition, 3.1 percent or 12 people are against the media management of TV productions, 14.2 percent or 55 people have no opinion and 82.7 percent or 321 people agree with the media management of television productions.
Hypothesis 1: It seems that there is a meaningful relationship between the media management of television productions and the cognitive selection of programs from the audience.
In according to the chi-square test calculated about 3.104 and degrees of freedom 2 with 5% error and 95% confidence.
It is shown that the relationship between 2 variables is not significant. In other words, there is no relationship between media management of television productions and cognitive selection of programs.
Hypothesis 2: It seems that there is a meaningful relationship between the media management (Authoritarian style) of television productions and the cognitive selection of programs from the audience.
In according to the chi-square test calculated about 60.848 and degrees of freedom 5 with 1% error and 99% confidence.
The relationship between 2 variables is significant. In other words, there is a relationship between authoritarian style media management and cognitive selection of programs. Therefore, self-censorship, control of television productions, determining the intellectual framework and targeted productions has a statistically significant relationship with the audience's benefit, satisfaction, trust, cognitive choice of television programs and productions.
Hypothesis 3: It seems that there is a meaningful relationship between the media management (liberal style) of television productions and the cognitive selection of programs from the audience.
In according to the chi-square test calculated about 23.89 and degrees of freedom 6 with 1% error and 99% confidence.
The relationship between 2 variables is significant. In other words, there is a relationship between libertarian style media management and cognitive selection of programs. Therefore, paying attention to individual freedoms, uncensored television productions, freedom of information and professional independence has a statistically significant relationship with the audience's benefit, satisfaction, trust, cognitive choice of television programs and productions.
Hypothesis 3: It seems that there is a meaningful relationship between the media management (Social responsibility style) of television productions and the cognitive selection of programs from the audience.
In according to the chi-square test calculated about 12.156 and degrees of freedom 4 with 1% error and 99% confidence.
In other words, there is a relationship between social responsibility style media management and cognitive selection of programs.
Therefore, freedom of information along with media commitment, television productions to solve social problems, productions that answer society's questions, and productions with educational, cultural and information topics are related to the benefit, satisfaction, trust and cognitive selection of television programs and productions. It is statistically significant.
Hypothesis 3: It seems that there is a meaningful relationship between the media management (Developmental style) of television productions and the cognitive selection of programs from the audience.
In according to the chi-square test calculated about 6.519 and degrees of freedom 4 with 5% error and 95% confidence.
It is shown that the relationship between 2 variables is not significant.
In other words, there is no relationship between developmental style media management and cognitive selection of programs.
Therefore, television productions with economic issues and developments, consolidation and strengthening of national independence, consolidation and strengthening of national culture and language, reflecting the programs of developing countries with the benefit, satisfaction, trust and selection of television programs and productions from There is no statistically significant relationship with the audience.
To investigate the relationship between cognitive selection of programs and television management styles, using Pearson's correlation test, authoritarian management style has a direct relationship of 0.338 and social responsibility style has a negative relationship of -0.133.
Therefore, the more self-censorship, control of television productions, determining the intellectual framework and targeted productions, the greater the audience's benefit, satisfaction, trust and cognitive choice of television programs and productions.
Conclusion
According to media management styles in this research, TV media was evaluated based on four authoritarian, liberal, social responsibility and developmental styles. The data shows that the respondents consider these roles as medium and high and evaluate these roles positively in the cognitive selection of TV programs. An audience that uses television with the motive of gaining awareness, acquiring news and information, training and acquiring skills, when any of these management styles.
If he directs to this need, his satisfaction will also be provided and he will be directed to the conscious choice of television productions. Therefore, the results show that the media management style of the television productions of the national media does not lead the audience to the satisfaction of the programs and their selective attention and retention towards the television programs is at a low level. This research seeks to find ways to increase the amount of conscious choice of television programs by the audience, which leads to satisfaction. One of these ways is using media management styles. Based on the results of the present research, the media management role of authoritarian, liberal and social responsibility styles of television productions on the cognitive selection of programs by the audience has been evaluated positively, and this shows that these three media management styles can influence the selection b) be effective in knowing the audience and play a big role in this field,
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Document information
Published on 06/12/23
DOI: 10.1177/00302228221129948
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA license
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