Mediated World (Lecture 1)

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Media = Technologies

  • Media is always changing
  • Intensification of media is our everyday lives
  • Media as salient system of communication in a complex globalising world. 
  • Importance of time and place.
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Media Production

  • Theorists adopt a critical stance. 
  • There are 'worries' about the impact of capitalist development of media on individuals, communities and societies. 
  • Consumers - are seduced, manipulated, passive and mass. Neo-Marxist ideologies (Lec2,3,4 and 6)
  • Citizens - are seduced, manipulated, specific, worried about democracy and voice (Habermas, Chomsky Lec4 and 8
  • Communities - lose their localised culture and values as cultural imperialism homogenises culture (Globalisation Lec2)
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Transmission -> Reception

  • Frankfurt School - Adorno and Horkheimer Lec2
    • Worries about the commodification of culture = debased (standardised) and non-challenging. 
    • Takes away the tools for individual creativity and critical reflection.
    • Audiences are seduced e.g. pseudo-individualism.
  • Althusser Lec3 develops a Marxist theory on ideology. 
    • Ideological State Apparatus = work on our beliefs (e.g. education, religion, the family, media and popular culture) 
    • Individuals are hailed/ interpelled in "what's normal".
    • lack of agency - people are passive. 
  • Habermas Lec4 is especially concerned about citizenship and democracy -
    • Democracy = not only about voting but participation in political debates
  • Worried about large corporations and their manipulation of public opinion. 
  • Has there been a decline in critical democratic debate and opposition. 
  • Imperialism Lec2 - shifting the values of the powerful onto those that are less powerful -> from West to the rest. 
  • Boudrillard Lec8 - concerned about the sheer quantity of images in our mediated world.
    • This makes it hard to make meanings stable
    • Worried about sign/ symbolic value of ruling over use value
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Transmission -> Reception (2)

  • Media 'effects' research Lec6
    • Focus mostly on negative rather than positive 'effects'.
    • Moralistic in tone (violent toys and kids). 
      • Hypodermic syringe (strong effect)
      • Limited effects - Lazarfeld's 'top-step-flow'
      • Minimal effects
  • Need to challenge the moralities in debate. 
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Transmission and Reception

  • All of the theories by Adorno, Baudrillard, Althusser etc. are challenged in some way, mostly by giving 'audiences' and 'citizens' more agency. 
  • Herzog et al (US and Lazereld 30/40s) 
  • What do audiences get out of media consumption?
    • Uses and gratifications
    • Social learning
    • Cultivation and de-sensitisation
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Transmission and Reception (2)

  • Gramsci's notion of hegemony is more dynamic than Althusser's notion of ideology
  • Gives individuals more agency
  • Hegemony needs to be fought for, through cultural struggles
  • Dominant groups must engage in political, cultural and ideological struggles to secure their power
  • Resistance to 'normality' - often symbolic and in small ways e.g. Hebdige on resistance through style
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Transmission and Reception (3)

Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (60's-80's)

  • Stuart Hall - production, texts and consumption relatively independent. 
  • Audiences decode media texts
  • Media and everyday life 
    • Diverse audiences
    • Media often side - issue in everyday life
    • Dreaming and escape 
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Transmission and Reception (4)

Texts as relatively independent? 

  • How are texts 'made up'? 
  • Analysis of textual structures/conventions and their impact
  • Stereotypes 
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Transmission and Reception (5)

Politics, democracy and friendship done in different ways. 

  • New social movements 
  • Social networking through new digital media
  • Prosumption - is the production - consumption binary collapsing?
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