International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

The term media performance has a broad reference to the assessment of mass media according to a range of evaluative criteria and primarily employing “objective” methods. In practice most attention has been given to the product of mass media, its content as sent and received (→ Media Production and Content). The criteria applied are mainly derived either from professional goals and standards or from considerations of the → public interest as specified in certain evaluative concepts (→ Standards of News). The methods are mainly those of the social sciences, aiming to be systematic, reliable, and leading to some degree of generalization (→ Research Methods). We are thus speaking of a particular field of media research with several different aims and purposes (→ Communication as a Field and Discipline). Apart from general description, these purposes include the wish to improve the media in some way, to support a line of criticism of media, to explain variations in quality of performance, and to identify causal factors.Although the origin of the term media performance, as used here, is uncertain, it was employed for many years to classify topics of articles (mainly content analyses of news; → Content Analysis, Quantitative) in Journalism Quarterly, the official publication of the American Association for Education in Journalism (AAEJ). This positions media performance in close relation ... log in or subscribe to read full text