MC400/MC408 Theories and Concepts in Media and Communications

Power and Critique 28 October 2003

Sonia Livingstone

Lecture outline
What is power? Questions of media and power Models of power Contestations of media power

What is power?
...We understand by "power" the chance of a man or of a number of men (sic) to realize their own will in a communal action even against the resistance of others who are participating in the action. (Weber, Max 'Class, Status and Party, in Bendix, R. and Lipset, S. (eds), Class Status and Power, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967, 21)

Forms of power
Forms Economic Political Coercive Symbolic Resources Material, financial Authority Armed force Means of information and communication Institutions Commercial enterprises States Military, police Cultural: church, education and media

Questions of power
How far has the exercise of power in contemporary society been affected by or become increasingly dependent on the rise of the modern media of mass communication? Has the rise of the modern media increased or decreased the power of governments, or elites, or the forces and interests of capitalism over us? How powerful have the media been in changing the way we think or in affecting the things we do? How powerful are the media in providing a basis for social order and social integration?

Specific questions
How far has the exercise of power in contemporary society been affected by or become increasingly dependent on the rise of the modern media of mass communication? Who controls the media and in whose interests? Who has access to the media and on what terms? Whose versions of the world are presented? How effective are the media in achieving their chosen ends? How are these things changing and as a result of what factors (technology, globalisation, changing demographics and social movements)

The dominance model

The mass media as subservient to other institutions (ie not independent variables) The media organisations are likely to be owned or controlled by a small number of powerful interests and to be similar in kind and purpose A high degree of mass production and mass dissemination of content with a limited and undifferentiated view of the word - expressing and reinforcing dominant interests Large and undifferentiated audiences, conditioned and constrained to accept these messages, largely uncritical and impotent (Screen Theory) The effects of the media strong and predictable, tending to reinforce both the media's power and the dominant groups' power over the media The media against change, and for constant legitimation of the existing political order

The pluralist model

The media as one element in a complex and constantly changing social, cultural and political order, in which: There are competing political, social, cultural interests and groups There are many different and independent media Which in turn provide creative, free and often original programming And provide a forum for diverse and competing views, responsive to audience demand The audiences themselves are fragmented, selective, reactive and active Numerous effects, without consistency or predictability of direction, but often 'no effect'

The processual model

Strategies of symbolic construction are the tools with which symbolic forms capable of creating and sustaining relations of domination can be produced; they are symbolic devices which facilitate the mobilisation of meaning. But whether the symbolic forms thereby produced serve to sustain relations of domination or to subvert them, to bolster up powerful individuals and groups or to undermine them, is a matter that can be resolved only by studying how those symbolic forms operate in particular social-historic circumstances, how they are used and understood by the subjects who produce and receive them in the socially structured contexts of everyday life (Thompson, 1990; 67). Media power is not simply something that media institutions (or media texts) possess or their audiences absorb [it is] the complex outcome of practices at every level of social interaction. Media power is not a binary relation of domination between large and small actors, with large actors (the media) having the automatic ability to dominate small actors (audience members) simply because of their size. Media power is reproduced through the details of what social actors (including audience members) do and say (Couldry, 2000; 4).

Contestations of power
Culture Technology

Politics