CH 6
MEDIA IN EVERYDAY LIFE
THE MASSES & MASS MEDIA
Media theory sees the word masses as negative, in that it has been used to characterize audiences as passively accepting media practices. Lack of criticism.
MASS MEDIA: those media that are designed to reach large audiences, and that work in unison to generate specific dominant or popular representations of events, people or places.
RADIO TELEVISION CINEMA PRESS WEB?
How did Mass Media / Mass Society come about?
Critics argue that urban populations lost their sense of community and social belonging.
How does Rauschenberg use media in his work?
Does Rauschenberg have a positive or negative attitude toward media? Why?
Is there a difference between media & mass media?
MEDIA FORMS
"In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message
This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology." -Marshall Mcluhan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko6j9v1c9ze
Whenever we create a new innovation - be it an invention or a new idea - many of its properties are fairly obvious to us. We generally know what it will nominally do, or at least what it is intended to do, and what it might replace. We often know what its advantages and disadvantages might be.
But it is also often the case that, after a long period of time and experience with the new innovation, we look backward and realize there were effects of which we were entirely unaware. We sometimes call these effects "unintended consequences," although "unanticipated consequences" might be a more accurate description.
MEDIUM / MESSAGE
MEDIUM / MESSAGE Putting the two together allows people to jump to the mistaken conclusion, like McLuhan was saying, that the information content should be ignored as inconsequential. Often people will triumphantly hail that the medium is "no longer the message," or flip it around to proclaim that the "message is the medium." That is not the case.
CONVERGENCE: (a term used to describe the coming together of media forms) has resulted in the merger of such previously discrete instruments and technologies as the still camera, the video camera, the telephone, the musical listening device, the Internet, and the video screen.
McLuhan always thought of a medium in the sense of a growing medium, like the fertile potting soil into which a seed is planted, or the agar in a Petri dish.
Why is this understanding of "the medium is the message" particularly useful? We tend to notice changes - even slight changes (that unfortunately we often tend to discount in significance.) "The medium is the message" tells us that noticing change in our societal or cultural ground conditions indicates the presence of a new message, that is, the effects of a new medium.
BROADCAST, NARROWCAST, & WEBCAST MEDIA
In broadcast media, one central source broadcasts a signal to many venues, whereas narrowcast media target, via cable and other means, niche audiences.
Top 3 Most Visited Blogs 1 Huffington Post 110,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors 2 TMZ 30,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors 3 Business Insider 25,500,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors *As of March 2017 (ebizmba Rank)
?????? s The person who takes pen in hand, and writes an essay, is that the author? A medieval monk who copies a manuscript, is he the author? He s the one wielding the instrument, he s the one leaving the mark. But is he the author?
Each technological change brings about a new confusion of the concept of authorship.
Stephen Colbert - Remix
THE HISTORY OF MASS MEDIA CRITIQUES
One of the major critiques of mass media was articulated by Herbert Schiller, who argued that mass broadcasting, with its ability to reach large numbers of people across national boundaries with the same messages, fosters conformity to dominant ideas about politics and culture.
MEDIA & DEMOCRATIC POTENTIAL
A response to some of the critiques of mass media sees communications technologies as empowering tools for use by citizens to promote an open flow of information and exchange of ideas
We live in the golden age of information-accessibility: 60 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute 119 million tweets are sent a day 30 billion pieces of content are shared each month on Facebook.
DIGITAL DIVIDE: digital divide refers to the growing inequality of Internet access between socioeconomic groups and different demographic levels.
Research increasingly shows that one of the essential ways to attack digital inequalities is by addressing the fact that technologies are always created with cultural biases built-in that limit their use
MEDIA & THE PUBLIC SPHERE
Michael Warner s definition of public as a space of discourse, which involves a relation among strangers in which public speech is both personal and impersonal, a social space constituted through the reflexive circulation of discourse, that is, the circulation and exchange of ideas.
CONVERGENCE: the term convergence has often been used over the last decade to describe the processes through which technologies, such as computers, telephony, and broadcasting have come together to spark the so-called communication revolution
BENEFITS OF CONVERGENCE: -Specifics -Streamlined -Convenience
VIEWS AGAINST CONVERGENCE: -unpredictable -shared space -competition
CH 7
ADVERTISING, CONSUMER CULTURES, & DESIRE
CONSUMER SOCIETIES
CONSUMER SOCIETIES: Consumer societies are based on capitalism, the overproduction of goods and the need of workers to be consumers, and the need to consume goods.
ENVY, DESIRE & BELONGING
Many ads imply that their product can alleviate this state of dissatisfaction.
COMMODITY CULTURE & FETISHISM
A consumer culture is a commodity culture.
how consumerism creates an abstract world of signs and symbols separate from the economic context of commerce and production is the idea of commodity fetishism.
COMMODITY FETISHISM: the process by which mass-produced goods are emptied of the meaning of their production (the context in which they were produced and the labor that created them) and then filled with meanings in ways that both mystify the product and turn it into a fetish object.
Because of the erasure of the labor process, laborers cannot take pride in their work, unlike handmade items, which retain more of the signifiers of production.
BRANDS & THEIR MEANING
GENERICIDE: When a brand is used to refer to ALL products in that category.
WHAT IS A BRAND?
A BRAND IS NOT A LOGO
A BRAND IS NOT AN IDENTITY
A BRAND IS NOT A PRODUCT
A BRAND IS NOT A PRODUCT
Like human beings, all brands are born equal. The trick is to prove one isn t. Branding is the art and science of identifying and fulfilling human physical and emotional needs by capturing attention, imagination and emotion long enough to make money from it. Idris Mootee
A brand is a person s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization
Individual human agency and desire are not wholly controlled by the strategies of industry market experts.
WHY IS BRANDING SUCH A HOT TOPIC?
WHY IS BRANDING SUCH A HOT TOPIC? Because consumers tend to base their decisions on trust
DOES A BRAND HAVE VALUE?
WHY DO BRANDS MATTER IN VISUAL CULTURE?
WHY DO BRANDS MATTER IN VISUAL CULTURE? Brands help us choose
THE MARKETING OF COOLNESS
Ironically, there are many paradoxes in this shift: the selling of products through values that appear to reject consumer culture.
ANTI-ADS & CULTURE JAMMING
CH 8
POSTMODERNISM, INDIE MEDIA, & POP CULTURE
POSTMODERNISM & VISUAL CULTURES
Critic Fredric Jameson used the term postmodernity to describe the cultural logic of late capitalism.
Jean-François Lyotard characterized postmodern theory as profoundly skeptical of these grand narratives, their universalism, and the premise that they could explain the human condition.
Harvey believes that the skepticism associated with postmodernism can contribute to a space of community, localness, respect for otherness, and for resistances and social movements
Deleuze s term becoming is an important one that captures the importance of moving beyond negative historical precedents in order to create something new.
SIMULATION / SIMULACRA
Baudrillard s four stages of simulacra: 1. A faithful copy. 2. The perversion of the sign to be an unfaithful copy. 3. An empty copy that appears to be reality. 4. A simulation in which there is no reference to the original sign (and the original spirit is lost).
Baudrillard argues that consumer culture has evolved from a state in which we are surrounded by representations or imitations of things that really exist, toward a state in which our lives are filled with simulations, objects that look as if they represent something else but have really created the reality they seem to refer to.
ADDRESSING THE POSTMODERN SUBJECT
PASTICHE, PARODY, & THE REMAKE
INDIE MEDIA & POSTMODERN APPROACHES TO THE MARKET
POSTMODERN SPACE, GEOGRAPHY & THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
The self-consciousness of postmodernism is potentially itself a phenomenon that will fold in upon itself until its viability seems limited.
CH 9
SCIENTIFIC LOOKING LOOKING AT SCIENCE
SEEING THE UNSEEN
THE THEATRE OF SCIENCE
Operating theaters and the Body Worlds exhibition illustrate José van Dijck s claim about the transgression of the boundaries of: body/model organic/synthetic object/representation fake/real authentic/copy human/post-human
IMAGES AS EVIDENCE: CATALOGUING THE BODY
Scientific image-making developed in two areas: (a) images of medical patients and scientific specimens, which were widely deployed to create systems of categorization. (b) images taken of the body s interior.
VISION & TRUTH
THE DIGITAL BODY
CYBERNETIC ORGANISM: an entity that is part technology and part organism.
https://www.marketplace.org/2017/03/2 7/tech/how-augmented-realty-canimprove-shopping
VISUALIZING PHARMACEUTICALS
SCIENTIFIC LOOKING VS LOOKING PRACTICES
1. How do Warhol s Death and Disaster works rely on culturally informed interpretation? 2. What elements of scientific observation and practices of looking are present in these works?
3. How are these images different from the images on the below site, which contains information on crime scene investigator training? www.crime-scene-investigator.net