A Critical Introduction to Media Studies

Posted on Sep 7, 2024 in Arts and Humanities

Chapter 1: Introduction to Media Studies

1. How We Know What We Know

We learn in two ways: somatically and symbolically. Somatically, what we know may be from firsthand, unmediated experience. Symbolically, what we know may come from someone or something (the majority of our knowledge). This is mediated—the information came to us through some indirect channel or medium.

Before mass media arrived, people used spoken and written messages. The problems with that were the limitations of transportation, people changing stories, and the speed at which messages arrived.

Mass media address large audiences in many locations with relative efficiency.
Critical Media Studies is about the social and cultural consequences of that revolutionary capability.

2. Categorizing Mass Media

Media includes many aspects such as radio and the internet.

Mass media: communication technologies that have the potential to reach a large audience in remote locations.

(A) Print Media

The first mass medium.
German printer Johannes Gutenberg invented the moveable-type printing press. It brought the prices for books and letters down.
This type of media allowed for things to be preserved for the future and for knowledge to be spread to different countries.
The USA started its printing press in 1607 where it usually printed religious texts, but later it changed.
Newspapers were at first unsuccessful until they gained financial backing and hired editors.
19th & 20th century – Rapid growth for newspapers.
After 1973 – Decline in newspapers.
Magazines had the same trajectory as newspapers.
1741 – The US’s first magazine, “American Magazine,” was published.
Present – eBooks and online reading are changing things dramatically.

(B) Motion Picture and Sound Recording

Thomas Edison created the phonograph (1877) and kinetoscope (1892).
His goal was to combine audio and video into a film for more than one person to view.
The first combination was talking pictures or “talkies.”
The musical film – The Jazz Singer (1927) – debuted.
This resulted in the increased popularity of sound recording and the record industry.
Profit from sound recordings became greater than profits from sheet music.

Then there were many creations made for the combination to be viewed.

Long-playing records to CDs to MP3s.

(C) Broadcast Media

Public airwaves changed the industry from physical transportation.
Radio – experimented with transmissions (1890) and scheduled broadcasts (1920).
Television was connected with the radio as it also employed people from the radio industry.
By 1950, both radio and television were in huge demand. In 2011, 99% of households had at least one radio and 96.7% had at least one TV.
Two recent developments: satellite radio and cable and satellite TV.
Both charge for content and require a digital signal.

(D) New Media

Lev Manovich states that new media is hard to define: “new media are the cultural objects which use digital computer technology for distribution and circulation.”
Examples: eBooks, the internet, websites.
A question that comes up is whether one day this category will include all media?
New media’s history begins with the computer chip.
The internet became popular when people found out you could send messages instantly.
From 10% (1995) to 78% (2011) of adults use the internet.
TABLE 1.4 → Internet users increased 2.6% over 2012 and 77% of the US population uses the internet.

3. Living in Postmodernity

Postmodernity describes the historical period that began in the 1960s as the economic mode of production in most Western societies shifted FROM commodity-based manufacturing TO information-based services.
The key differences between modernity and postmodernity:
- Modernity (1850-1960)
  1. Monopoly (imperial) capitalism
  2. Industrialism
  3. Fordism
  4. Manufacturing and production
- Postmodernity (1960-present)
  1. Multinational (global) capitalism
  2. Informationalism
  3. Flexible accumulation
  4. Marketing and public relations

4. Convergence

Convergence is the tendency of formerly diverse media to share a common, integrated platform.

Before media convergence could become a reality, it had to overcome two obstacles:

The noise associated with analog signals, such as those used in television and radio broadcasting, generated message distortion and decay over long distances. Solution: Digitization—it reduced noise by relying on bits rather than a constant signal.
Bandwidth limitations prevented large data packets involving images and video from being transmitted quickly and easily over a communication channel. Solution: Improved data compression and transmission technologies allowed data to be transmitted quickly and easily over a communication channel.

5. Mobility

Refers to the ease with which an object can be moved from place to place.

6. Fragmentation

The “mass” in mass media usually means a large, undifferentiated, anonymous, and passive audience addressed by television, etc.
But the explosion of information in postmodernity has given way to cultural fragmentation.
Fragmentation is a splintering of the consuming public into ever more specialized taste cultures.
The internet itself has many separations. It employs tracking devices to track customers’ preferences for a better experience.

7. Globalization

Globalization is a complex set of social, political, and economic processes in which the physical boundaries and structural policies that previously separated nations are increasingly irrelevant in a world characterized by flexible and instantaneous worldwide social relations.
For mass media, which are owned and controlled almost entirely by multinational corporations, globalization creates opportunities to bring their cultural products to distant local markets.
This brings fears of “cultural imperialism.”

8. Simulation

According to Jean Baudrillard, “simulation is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.”
America, in particular, is characterized by simulation: an implosion of the image (i.e., representations) and the real.
Media endlessly produce and reproduce images of love, violence, and family that no longer point to or refer to some external reality.

9. Why Study the Media?

Socialization describes the process by which persons—both individually and collectively—learn, adopt, and internalize the prevailing cultural beliefs, values, and norms of a society.
All social institutions are mediators; they contribute to socialization.
Language can be seen as symbols operating as filters.

10. What We Learn

Mediated messages are comprised of content and form.
Content is the informational aspect of the message. Audiences are mostly aware of the content.
- Content does not have to have use-value or truth-value to be called informational.
Content is important when media outlets have to choose which topics are important and which are not.
Content should include unpopular viewpoints that would cause a great scope with the public.
Overall, mass media socialize us to care about certain things, have certain viewpoints, and adopt particular attitudes towards things.

11. How We Learn

Form is the cognitive component of a message, a way a message is packaged and delivered.
The packaging of a message is a consequence of the medium and genre or class.
The way a message is packaged affects how we process it—it trains us how to think.
The way we interpret language is different from how we interpret images.
Marshall McLuhan said that “the medium is the message.”
- Images are replacing texts.

12. Doing Critical Media Studies

Critical Media Studies describes an array of theoretical perspectives which, though diverse, are united by their skeptical attitude, humanistic approach, political assessment, and commitment to social justice.

13. Attitude: Skeptical

Most media outlets tend to have their own way of portraying the news, for example.
People who want to analyze carefully adopt an attitude of skepticism.
This is not rejecting media but a form of hermeneutics of suspicion: a mode of close analysis with a deep distrust of surface appearances and “commonsense” explanations.

14. Approach: Humanistic

Media studies is a discipline within the humanities.
- It is associated with a particular set of intellectual concerns and approaches to the discovery of knowledge.
Media studies emphasizes self-reflection, critical citizenship, democratic principles, and human education.
The knowledge we get from media studies related to this is never complete, fixed, or finished.

15. Assessment: Political

Critical Media Studies focuses on the practical and political implications of its findings and entails judgment.
Critical studies are concerned about whose interests are served by media and how they relate to power.
Research in this form will relate to how media create, maintain, or subvert particular social structures and whether or not such structures are just and egalitarian.

16. Ambition: Social Justice

Critical media studies seeks to interfere with and identify political injustices and also challenge them.
It believes that scholars should have the goal of “improving society.”
Scholars of critical media studies often take part in groups like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).

17. Key Critical Perspectives

There are 12 critical perspectives, each coming from a different social theory.
Theory is an explanatory and interpretive tool that simultaneously enables and limits our understanding of the particular social product, practice, or process under investigation.
Kenneth Burke notes that no theory is without limitations.