Transcript MCM 733: Communication Theory

MCM 733:
Communication Theory
Chapters 8, 9
Ch 7:Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• Limited effects and functionalism was criticized
by Europeans who alleged that they favoured the
status quo
• Children and adults grew up in a mediascape
– They watched more TV, were socialized by TV and
books.
– This led to the idea that Mass Comm was educating
them and giving them models for living and identity
– Culture seemed to become more important: culture
being defined as a set of learned behaviours for
members of a social group
– Mass comm is privileging global voices over local ones
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• Cultural Studies: focus on use of media to
create forms of culture that structure
everyday life
• Hegemonic Culture: culture imposed from
above or outside that serves the interests of
those in dominant social positions
• Political economy theories: focus on socila
elites’ use of economic power to exploit media
institutions
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• Microscopic interpretive theories: focus on
how individuals and social groups use media
to create and foster forms of culture that
structure everyday life (critical)
• Macroscopic theories: how media institutions
are structured within capitalist economies.
Examine how social elites operate media to
earn profits and exercise influence in society
(political economy)
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• Our experience of everyday life, including
reality itself is a social construction
• Mass media help shape this construction
• They see themselves as agents of disruption…
changing the political order by shirking
“received opinion” and “making the familiar
seem unfamiliar”
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• Critical Cultural Theory: these theorists
espouse a specific axiology which licenses
them to espouse specific values and use them
to evaluate and criticise the status quo
• Critical theorists say that media tends to
reinforce the status quo because it is
controlled by power elites who wish to
maintain power and order – to the exclusion
of disempowered groups
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• Critical Theories are concerned with:
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Countercultures
Pedagogy of the oppressed
Struggle against authority
Subversion of the known authority
Revolution
They refuse to promote a “solution” outside of
constant revolution because anytime that a social
structure is made, a power structure is put in place
and struggle and resistance must continue, but with
different actors.
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• Marxist Theory
– Inspired by Hegel but reacted against Hegel’s idealism
(German Idealism)
– Marx promoted a “scientific material” view of society,
based on economics and the study of capital distribution
among classes.
– Ideology for Marx was a set of thoughts, beliefs and
metaphors so engrained that they become subconscious: a
means for maintaining the social dominance of the upper
class
– A superstructure (upper class) dominate a substructure
(proletarian) group mostly through ideology and
persuasion
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• Neo Marxism
– British cultural studies is based on the concept of neoMarxism
– Neo Marxists focus on the culture and ideology of the
superstructure.
– They think that by subverting cultural norms that
oppress and exclude group, they can destabilize the
superstructure. This is due to their belief in linguistic
determinism.
– Linguistic determinism: the belief that reality is
entirely constructed through language and discourse.
– They favour subversion over violent revolution
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• Textual Analysis and Literary Criticism
– Humanists have specialized in analyzing texts since
the renaissance.
– The developed the “cannon” and the concept of
high culture – modern critical theory is identitybased and rejects all concept of high culture,
privileging popular culture
– Now critical theory is divided between purely
hermeneutic (understanding-based) approaches
and neo-Marxist ones.
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• Frankfurt School: a group of mostly Jewish neo-Marxist
scholars at the U of Frankfurt.
• Were humanists and used neo-Marxist methods to analyze
cultural products
• Celebrated high culture and denigrated popular culture as
being the product of
• Culture industries: mass media that turn high culture and
folk culture into commodities for profit
• Most humanists analyzed the culture itself, Theodor
Adorno and Max Horkheimer focused on the industries that
produced it.
• Frankfurt School had a big effect in the USA because they
emigrated to the USA during WWII
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• Neo-Marxist Thoery in Britain
– British cultural studies combined neo-Marxist theory with
methods from linguistics, anthropology, history and literary
criticism.
– Was focused on the domination of minorities and identitybased oppressed groups (gender, race, class, sexuality,
subculture) by elites through culture.
– Hermeneutic attention is shifted from the cultural
products themselves toward the “lived culture” of minority
groups
– Raymond Williams denigrated high culture and privileged
folk culture and he argued that mass media posed a threat
to worthwhile cultural development because of its origins
in marketing for capitalist oppressors
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• Stuart Hall: understood ideology as “those
images, concepts and premises which provide
frameworks through which we represent,
interpret, understand and make sense of some
aspect of social existence.”
• Mass media were a pluralistic public forum
which provides a “site” in which various forces
struggle to define social existence. Social
reality was defined in the mass media.
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• The activism of British Cultural Studies was both its
strength and its downfall.
• They are accused of strong bias and turning academic
research into a program for “cause advocacy”.
• Their work has also been accused of creating a nihilistic
“culture of resentment” which only leads to division
and bitterness among different social groups.
• It has also been argued that that their focus on the
group belonging and identity is a regressive factor
away from liberalism.
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• Cultural studies in America: Transmission
versus ritual perspectives
– Functionalist and limited effects theories have
taken a “transmissional perspective”
– Cultural studies is focused on our everyday rituals
that structure and shape our reality
– Ritual perspective: view of mass comm as the
representation of shared belief where reality is
produced, maintained, repaired and transformed
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• American Popular Culture Research
– Strongly influenced by Marshall McLuhan: unlike
British critical theorists, they are not activist and
share McLuhan’s optimism
• Some major findings:
– TV shows have multiple layers of meaning which
are put there on purpose
– Audience interpretations of content are very
diverse
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• Harold Innis: The Bias of Communication
– Different empires were based on communication
technologies that privileged types of knowledge
– Empire expansion relied more on messaging from the
centre than military might
– New comms techs create struggles between types of
knowledge
– Space-binding vs. time-binding techs
– The Bias of communication: new techs also tended to
centralize power
– Theory of the periphery and the centre
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• McLuhan
– The Medium is the Message: focused on popular
culture
– Change in comm techs bring about change in culture
and social order
– McLuhan was not critical: he was not a member of
revolutionary groups or
– McLuhan was cognitivist: communication
technologies are extensions of the mind and the body
– Technological determinist
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• McLuhan thought that comms techs could transform
our sensory experiences
• The medium is the message: new forms of media
transform our experience of ourselves and our society
and this influence is ultimately more important than
the content of the specific messages. The content of a
medium is another medium
• Global village: a new form of social organization
emerging as instantaneous electronic media tie the
entire world into one great social-politicalpsychological network.
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• The extensions of Man: media literally extend
sight, hearing and tough through time and space
• Aural vs. visual space: linear, alphabetic, visual
cultural changed social cognition and constrained
it. Aural culture freed the mind and brought back
stories, myths and retribalized socieyt
• Hot and cool media: hot is high def and cool is
low-def
Ch 7: Emergence of Critical Cultural
Theories…
• McLuhan was wildly popular in the communications
industry
• Dismissed by empirical researchers
• Dismissed by critical theorists for his optimism and
cognitivism and lack of desire for bloody revolution or
sneaky subversion of the elites. McLuhan thought
subversion was profoundly dishonest and could lead to
no good.
• McLuhan was the popcultural and mass comm guru
but personally disliked technology and mass culture –
he was scholarly, contemplative, a dandy, and very
religious (Catholic).
Ch 9: Audience Theories: Uses,
Reception and Effects
• Source dominated to active audience theory:
– Uses and gratifications theory was the first to give
the audience credit. Herzog’s soap opera study
identified three major means of gratification
• Listening was a means of emotional release
• Opportunities for wishful thinking
• Advice on life
– U&G : the uses to which people put media and
gratifications they seek from it.
Ch 9: Audience Theories: Uses,
Reception and Effects
• Revival of U&G
– U&G offered three tantalizing characteristics of
computer-mediated mass comm:
• Interactivity – strengthens the concept of the active
user
• Demassification – individuals can tailor content to their
needs
• Asynchroneity: individuals can receive messages in a
staggered fashion.
Ch 9: Audience Theories: Uses,
Reception and Effects
• The Active Audience Revisited:
– Blumler (1979) identified several meanings for the
term activity:
• Utility: media have uses for people and people can put
media to those uses
• Intentionality: consumption of media content can be
directed by people’s prior motivations
• Selectivity: people’s use of media might reflect their existing
interests and preferences
• Imperviousness to influence: audience members are often
obstinate: they might not want to be controlled by anyone
or anything, even mass media. Audience members actively
avoid certain types of media influence.
Ch 9: Audience Theories: Uses,
Reception and Effects
• Basic Assumptions of the U&G Model
– The audience is active and its media use is goal-oriented
– The initiative in linking need gratification to a specific
media choice rests with the audience member
– The media compete with other sources of need
satisfaction
– People are aware enough of their own media use,
interests, and motives to be able to provide researchers
with an accurate picture of that use
– Value judgements regarding the audience’s lining its needs
to specific media or content should be suspended
Ch 9: Audience Theories: Uses,
Reception and Effects
• Types of Social Situations in which U&G apply
– Social situations can produce tensions and conflicts leading to
pressure for their easement through media consumption
– Social situations can create an awareness f problems that
demand attention, info about which might be sought in media
– Social situations can impoverish real-life opportunities to satisfy
certain needs, and the media can serve as substitutes or
supplements.
– Social situations often elicit specific values and their affirmation
and reinforcement can be facilitated by the consumption of
related media materials.
– Social Situations can provide realms of expectations of
familiarity with media, which must be met to sustain
membership in specific social groups
Ch 9: Audience Theories: Uses,
Reception and Effects
• Reception Studies: Decoding and Sense-making
– Reception studies: audience-centered theory that focuses on
how various types of audience members make sense of specific
forms of content
– Polysemic: the characteristic of media texts as fundamentally
ambiguous and legitimately interpretable in different ways.
– Preferred reading: in critical theory: the producer-intended
meaning of a piece of content; assumed to reinforce the status
quo
– Negotiated meaning: when an audience member creates a
personally meaningful interpretation of content that differs
from the preferred reading in important ways.
– Oppositional decoding: when an audience member develops
interpretations of content that are in direct opposition to a
dominant reading
Ch 9: Audience Theories: Uses,
Reception and Effects
• Feminist Reception studies:
– Radway (1986) found that many women read in book
clubs, romance novels, in silent rebellion against male
domination. The books were an escape from housework
and liked men who were strong but gentle and women
who controlled their own destinies
– Steiner (1988) studied 10 yrs of the “no comment” feature
of Ms. magazine. She argued that Ms. readers engaged in
oppositional decoding of stories of male domination
– McRobbie (1984) did a similar reading of Flashdance. Girls
liked it more because of the dream of physical autonomy it
presented than any simple acceptance of male domination
Ch 9: Audience Theories: Uses,
Reception and Effects
• New Directions in Audience Effects Research: The
Rise of Moderate Effects Theories
– Information Processing theory: mechanistic analogies
to describe and interpret how people deal with all the
stimuli they receive
– Entertainment theory: conceptualizes and explicates
key psychological mechanisms underlying audience
use and enjoyment of entertainment oriented media
content
– Social marketing theory: collection of middle-range
theories concerned with promoting socially valuable
information
Ch 9: Audience Theories: Uses,
Reception and Effects
• Information-Processing Theory: CogSci
– Humans as information processing biological
machines
– Our mind/brain helps us navigate the flow of
information, we avoid and filter more than we
seek out
– Big difference between cognition (passive) and
consciousness (active)
– Consciousness does not always give us an
accurate picture of reality
Ch 9: Audience Theories: Uses,
Reception and Effects
• Cognition is the product of human evolution:
it is biological and genetic/epigenetic
• We use these cognitive mechanisms to read
the thousands of pieces of non-verbal
information we are surrounded by everyday
• Cogsci provides insight into the mechanisms
active when we interact with
media/language/art/text/music/taste/smell
Ch 9: Audience Theories: Uses,
Reception and Effects
• Cognitive science recognizes the limits of
consciousness: we associate consciousness
and rationality, but neuroscience is showing
the power of affect (Scientific American Mind)
• We have limited cognitive resources
• We prioritize visual information
• Poorly structured news stories were hard to
understand even though the audience tried
hard
Ch 9: Audience Theories: Uses,
Reception and Effects
• Processing Television News
– We approach TV news passively
– We are distracted by many other things while we watch
– We depend on visual and auditory cues to draw our
attention to particular stories
– Schemas: more or less highly structured sets of categories
or plans
– The average newscast is so complicated to be “biased
against understanding”
– Human interest stories with compelling plotlines were well
understood
– Stories with unrelated visuals or jargon were hard to
understand.
Ch 9: Audience Theories: Uses,
Reception and Effects
• Entertainment theory
– Studies the psychological processes associated
with entertainment
• Mood Management Theory:
– The main reason we use media is to regulate,
change and control our moods
Ch 9: Audience Theories: Uses,
Reception and Effects
• Social Marketing Theory
– Methods for inducing awareness of campaign topics or themes
– Methods for targeting message at audiences more susceptible
to receiving them
– Methods for reinforcing messages within targeted segments and
for encouraging people to influence others through face-to-face
– Methods for cultivating images of people, products and services
– Methods for stimulating interest and inducing information
seeking by audience members
– Methods for inducing desired decision making or positioning
– Methods for activating audience segments, especially those
who have been targeted by the campaign
Ch 9: Audience Theories: Uses,
Reception and Effects
• Hierarchy of Effects: practical theory calling for
the differentiation of persuasion effects
relative to the time and effect necessary for
their accomplishment
• Digital Divide: lack of access to
communication technologies for certain
communities (rural, racial, poor)