MCM 733: Communication Theory

1
MCM 733Communication Theory

• Chapters 8, 9

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Ch 7Emergence 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

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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Ch 7 Emergence of Critical Cultural Theories

• Critical Theories are concerned with
• 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.

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Ch 7 Emergence of Critical Cultural Theories

• Marxist Theory
• Inspired by Hegel but reacted against Hegels
  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

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Ch 7 Emergence of Critical Cultural Theories

• Neo Marxism
• British cultural studies is based on the concept
  of neo-Marxism
• 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

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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
  identity-based 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.

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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

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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
  identity-based 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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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 McLuhans optimism
• Some major findings
• TV shows have multiple layers of meaning which
  are put there on purpose
• Audience interpretations of content are very
  diverse

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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

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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

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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-political-psychological network.

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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

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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).

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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. Herzogs soap opera
  study identified three major means of
  gratification
• Listening was a means of emotional release
• Opportunities for wishful thinking
• Advice on life
• UG the uses to which people put media and
  gratifications they seek from it.

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Ch 9 Audience Theories Uses, Reception and
Effects

• Revival of UG
• UG 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.

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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 peoples prior motivations
• Selectivity peoples 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.

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Ch 9 Audience Theories Uses, Reception and
Effects

• Basic Assumptions of the UG 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 audiences lining
  its needs to specific media or content should be
  suspended

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Ch 9 Audience Theories Uses, Reception and
Effects

• Types of Social Situations in which UG 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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/te
  xt/music/taste/smell

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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)