MC408 MT 2010-11

Theories and Concepts in Media and Communications I:

Key concepts and interdisciplinary approaches

Sonia Livingstone

Why M & C ?
significance macro (global, Everyday political, economic) to micro (lifeworld) significance explaining Theoretical societal processes and historical change (normative)/ practical significance Policy 2 using knowledge to make a difference

Mapping the field of M&C

Political Politicaleconomy economy Regimes Regimesof of regulation regulation Institutions Production Organisation Societal Societalstructures structures Global Globalcontexts contexts

Cultural Culturaland and historical historical frameworks frameworks

Technological, Technological, Cultural forms creative creative& & Channel characteristics market market Media contents innovations innovations

Differentiating Differentiating Audiences, publics Lifeworld Lifeworldpatterns patterns factorsof ofage, age, Understanding, influences factors of daily life, family, of daily life, family, Participation, identities gender, gender,status status community community

An interdisciplinary field
Politics Politics Economics Economics Law Law Institutions Production Organisation Sociology Sociology History History

Cultural Culturalstudies studies Literary Literarystudies studies

Science/technolog Science/technolog Cultural forms y y Channel characteristics & &information information Media contents studies studies

Anthropology Anthropology

Audiences, publics Understanding, influences Participation, identities

Psychology Psychology

On (inter)disciplinarity

We sometimes forget that communication research is a field, not a discipline. In the study of man, it is one of the great crossroads where many pass but few tarry. Scholars come into it from their own disciplines, bringing valuable tools and insights, and later go back, like Lasswell, to the more central concerns of their disciplines. (Schramm,1959) "The early approaches carried with them necessary oversimplifications which have become clear only because the approaches were pushed to the point where they exposed their limitations. The result has been not only a recognition of the complexity of the communication process but a shift to primary concern with the substance of the problems with 5less commitment to a particular device of investigation. (Bauer, 1959)

On media power

Centripetal: The powerful capacity of [media] to draw towards itself and incorporate (in the process, transforming) broader aspects of the culture.

Centrifugal: [Media] seeming to project its images, character types, catch-phrases and latest creations to the widest edges of the culture, permeating if not dominating the conduct of other cultural affairs.

6 Television Form and Public Address (John Corner, 1995, p.5)

On communication power

The most fundamental form of power lies in the ability to shape the human mind. The way we feel and think determines the way we act, both individually and collectively.

The process of formation and exercise of power relationships is decisively transformed in the new organizational and technological context derived from the rise of global digital networks of communication as the fundamental symbol-processing system of our time.
Communication Power (Manuel Castells, 2009, p. 3-4)

Media and Communications

Whatever else they may be, technologies and institutions for sure, media are aligned, arrayed, disposed, produced, and put into motion in this world as communicative practices. Media and communication are conceptual twins, a necessary pair; progress in our field requires thinking them together All media are communicative and all communication is always, already mediated.

(Rothenbuhler, 2009)

Communication as culture

From transmission to ritual: two traditions in Western thinking about communication (Carey 1989)

Transmission: a transport/geography metaphor for communication

Ritual: a view of communication as sharing, participation, association

Carey argues for both models, but with the ritual as primary

On the new culture industries

"When men are no longer united amongst themselves by firm and lasting ties, it is impossible to obtain the concurrence of any great number of them, unless you can persuade every man whose concurrence you require that his private interest obliges him voluntarily to unite his exertions to the exertions of all the rest. This can only be habitually and conveniently effected by the means of a newspaper: nothing but a newspaper can drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same moment. (de Tocqueville, 1835)

What is decisive today is the necessity inherent in the system not to leave the customer alone, not for a minute to allow him any suspicion that resistance is possible...must be shown all his needs as capable of fulfilment, and...those needs should be so predetermined that he feels himself to be the eternal consumer, the object of the culture industry The paradise offered by the culture industry is the same 10 old drudgery. (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1944)

Schools of research

Administrative research is carried out in the service of some kind of administrative agency of public or private character, whether beneficial or exploitative Critical research is posed against the practice of administrative research, requiring that, prior and in addition to whatever special purpose is to be served, the general role of our media of communication in the present social system should be studied (Lazarsfeld, 1941)

Nyre (2009): from the Ivory Tower to the Control 11 Tower (cf. McLuhan)

Are media distinctive?

resemble other institutions and Media forms of communication
(Seymour-Ure, The British Press and Broadcasting Since 1945)

represent a distinctive form of Media communication

(Thompson, The Media and Modernity)

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Five characteristics of mass communication

A certain technical and institutional means of production and diffusion The commodification of symbolic forms A structured break between the production of symbolic forms and their reception The extended availability of symbolic forms in space and time The public circulation of symbolic forms (Thompson, 1995) 13

A sense of change

We are, it seems, always on the cusp of a new sociality. (Golding, 2000: 166)

When does the present become the past? [...] Let us call it generational time, the time of generations, in which the fundamental historical work of regeneration (of change and renewal from one generation to the next) is enacted Long-term answers to the questions of the present only become apparent in the past. (Scannell, 2009)

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The grand sweep of history

Oral Modality Structure Relations Literacy Multi Variable Dyadic Low Print Mono Linear Niche High Broadcast Networked

Audio/visual Multi Linear Mass Low Hypertext/ networked Niche High(er)

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New media and communications

Replace mass production/text/audience with communication and information infrastructures: artefacts or devices used to communicate information questions of design, structure and development activities and practices in which people engage to communicate/ share information questions of cultural dissemination & social context social arrangements or organizational forms surrounding these devices/ practices questions of institutional organisation and governance
(Lievrouw & Livingstone, 2006)

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Four characteristics of new media

Todays media artefacts, activities and arrangements are:

recombinant in character, socially shaped by what already exists, what goes before characterised by network relations, shaped by broader social/political shifts in late modern society ubiquitous in their social consequences interactive, changing the relations between senders and receivers, producers and consumers
(Handbook of New Media, Lievrouw & Livingstone, 2006)

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Where do you stand?

Discipline/background? Purpose? Critical/administrative? Media distinctive or not? New media fundamentally different?
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Teaching and Assessment

Convenor, Prof Sonia Livingstone; Coordinator, Dr Alison Powell Half unit core course

MC408.1 Lectures: 1 hour each week MC408.2 Seminars: 1.5 hours each week from MT2 (sign up on LFY) MC408.3 Polis Media Leadership Dialogues MC408.4 MC Labs
Assessment

19 Reading lists . . . Buying books . . .Moodle . . .Office hours

Formative: select essay title from choice of 5; due MT6 Summative: unseen examination in the summer For information on assessment, see the Handbook and Moodle

Course Outline
1 04/10 Introduction Block 1: Key Concepts 2 11/10 Power 3 18/10 The Public Sphere 4 25/10 Globalisation 5 01/11 Mediation Block 2: Critical Perspectives 6 08/11 Political Economy 7 15/11 Cultural Critiques 8 22/11 Cosmopolitan Ethics 9 29/11 Postcolonial Theory 10 06/12 Conclusion Summer term W/b 02/05/2011 Revision session Prof Sonia Livingstone Dr Damian Tambini Dr Bart Cammaerts Prof Terhi Rantanen Prof Sonia Livingstone Dr Bingchun Meng Dr Myria Georgiou Prof Lilie Chouliaraki Dr Linje Manyozo Dr Bart Cammaerts All seminar leaders

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