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The Media Landscape… Not just what we watch, listen, play information society : the exchange of information is the predominant economic activity. Producing, processing, distributing information. MEDIA & (OTHER) SOCIETIES Pre-Agricultural Society. Mode of production Hunting and gathering
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The Media Landscape… • Not just what we watch, listen, play • information society: the exchange of information is the predominant economic activity. • Producing, processing, distributing information
MEDIA & (OTHER) SOCIETIESPre-Agricultural Society • Mode of production • Hunting and gathering • Communication • Spoken word • Epic poems • Iliad, Beowulf
Agricultural Society • Modes of production • Farming, fishing, mining • Land owned by ruling class • Communication • Development of writing • Few books
Industrial Society • Mode of production • Mass production • Factories with specialized jobs • Communication • Printed books • Gutenberg Bible 1455 • Slow increase in literacy
Information Society • Mode of production • Create, process, store, transmit information • Communication • Internet • Computer readable information
The Media Landscape, continued. • Converging Technologies • Convergence: integration of mass media, computers and telecommunications. • The iPhone • Converging Industries: Media consolidation
The Media Landscape, continued. • Reduced regulations on ownership • Increased regulation of content
Changing careers • Careers will be volatile • Digital multimedia production skills in demand
Media Theory • How do we understand the media? • How do we understand how we use the media? Theory: models that help us understand media around us and how we respond to them
I. Media Economics • Media monopolies • patterns that are not in best interest of consumers • Barriers to entry • The profit motive • QUESTION: What do media economics NOT tell us?
II. Sociological theories: • Functionalism: media serve functions for us as a society and as individuals • 1. Surveillance • 2. Interpretation • 3. Values transmission / Socialization • 4. Entertainment
III. Behavioral theories: seek to explain individual media behavior Uses and gratifications: media selections explained in terms of needs they satisfy Diffusion of innovations: spread of innovations, how this occurs and through whom
IV. Critical and cultural studies: explain interrelationships among media, content, audiences, culture Key issue: Representation: the act of portraying, depicting, symbolizing, or presenting the likeness of something. Language, visual arts, and media are systems of representation.
Types of Critical and Cultural Studies: • 1. Political economy: focuses on relationships between economic structures, media industry dynamics, and ideological content of media. • Karl Marx: • Owners' interests reflected by media and culture because dominant groups want to create an underlying consensus favoring their continued domination
Hegemony: way power maintains the status quo by convincing public that the current system is the best Global communism or participatory democracy?
2. Feminist studies • oppression of women rather than the oppression of the working class • Example: Content patterns: • Two few women appear in media • Limited to few stereotypical roles • Reasons? • Under-representation as media producers • Social norms
3. Ethnic studies • Structural problems with race and media • racial depictions associate whiteness with dominance
4. Aesethetic criticism: applies traditions of literary criticism to media • Genre: looks at how categories with distinctive style and format change over time • Semiotic analysis: words, sounds, images, interpreted as signs • signs: symbols of something other than literal action
5. Active Audience/Reception Studies • Communication process involves joint creation of meaning between author and producer: encoding/decoding • Audience reception a matter of reading of media texts • Creators of media content have a preferred reading. • Audience may accept that or produce oppositional or negotiated reading.
Cultural studies generally combines a number of these theoretical approaches. • Two key concerns basis of cultural studies work: • 1. ideological nature of mass communication • 2. complexity of communication message • Most often three components: • 1. Media Economics • 2. Textual Analysis (ethnic, feminist, aesthetic criticism) • 3. Audience Response