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KEY MEDIA THEORIES
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Information Theory
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Marxist Media Theory
Theodor Adorno / Max Horkheimer - Frankfurt School
Dialectic of Enlightenment: The Culture Industry:Enlightenment as Mass Deception (1947)
High Art vs. Culture Industry
Capitalist-driven entertainment industry - commoditisation - products are ‘same’ & reflect values of established system
Standardisation / homogeneity
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Theodor Adorno
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Cultural pessimismOwned by capitalist classes / consumed by mass of employees
Ulterior motives: repress imagination and render masses socially and politically inactive
Something is provided for all so that none may escape (Adorno 1973:123)
Formulaic, manufactured content: e.g. blockbusters, bestsellers, music hits
Illusion of individual air but conformism
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Passive audience
Audience is disempowered / drones
False consciousness: does not notice damage done
Hypodermic syringe
Neil Postman: couch potatoes / zombies
==> Media Effects research (e.g. psychology)
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Encoding/DecodingStuart Hall (1973) / Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
Decoding determined by social context and assumptions
Dominant reading
Negotiated reading
Oppositional reading
Role of ideology - Gramsci: hegemony / Althusser: interpellation
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Cultural Studies
John Fiske: Understanding Popular Culture / Reading the Popular
Popular culture made by people. Industries merely produce a repertoire of texts
Audience empowered to interpret, use, reject
Drive for innovation and change comes from the audience activity in the cultural economy (Fiske 1989c:62)
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John Fiske
Most texts contain ‘preferred’ meaning - as intended by producer - but also offer possibilities for consumers to create own alternative or resistant reading
Audience: producer of meanings and pleasures (cf Michel de Certeau ‘guerilla tactics’) - activates meanings in text
Media is ‘enabler’ of ideas and meanings, promoting diversity and difference = may lead to social change
Optimistic viewpoint
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Uses & Gratifications
What people do with media vs. what media does to people (Katz, 1959)
Cognitive needs - surveillanceAffective needsPersonal integrative needs - credibility, statusSocial integrative needs Tension release needs - diversion, escapism
Limited effects approach
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Reception studies
Qualitative approach / Ethnography
Exploratory
Ien Ang: Watching Dallas
David Morley: Nationwide Audience / Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic Leisure
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Textual analysis
Structuralism and semiology (Saussure, Peirce)
Barthes: sign systems / myths / ideologies
Discourse analysis / content analysis
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Psychoanalysis
Freud = Oedipus complex
Lacan = mirror stage
Mulvey = cinematic apparatus / male gaze / voyeurism / narcissism