Media, Culture and Critique

2019/2020

Academic Year

ENG

Instruction in English

3

ECTS credits

Delivered at:

Institute of Media

Course type:

Elective course

When:

4 year, 3 module

Instructor

Mylonas, Yiannis

Course Syllabus

Abstract

Critique is an essential feature of social, political and individual life across time in human history. The idea of critique has long established and enduring philosophical foundations. For instance, in the “Apology”, Plato notes Socrates’ dictum that “an unexamined life is a life not worth living”. This idea marked Socrates’ quest of truth seeking, along with the criteria to establish truth and what constitutes “the good life”. In the contemporary context of modern societies, critique is vital for a society’s well-being as it allows the assessing of the developments and the central features that characterize a given society and its trajectory. The theoretical tradition of critical theory advanced in the context of mass, modern societies, shaped by mass media and the industrial mode of production. Scholars like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1989) sought to develop what they framed as a critical way of thinking, to equip people with the appropriate conceptual tools to examine and to reflect upon their life circumstances, so as to shield societies from their possible regression into a high-tech –yet barbaric– state of affairs. Such scholars understood that technological progress –a central feature of modern societies- alone, cannot count for civilization progress. Mediated by economic or political imperatives, technology becomes a tool of coercion and domination. The example of their native Germany and the rise of Nazism to power there through high popular support, proved their hypothesis well enough. Critique thus aimed as assessing social developments from a universal humanitarian and a democratic perspective, which seemed to form a genuine sense of human development. In the media context, critique emerges through the advance of normative frameworks of thought and practice that allow the assessing and the evaluation of media practices. This way, one can judge how participatory social media actually are (e.g. Jenkins, 2007), by grasping the corporate side of Facebook or Google, and by understanding how they profit through users’ online participation and the propriatization of their data (Fuchs, 2017). One can also understand the ways that racist, sexist and classist discourses are reproduced in today’s media environment, and how consumer culture reproduces such biases, despite proclamations that deem such phenomena as “dated” (Hall, 2003). Along that, one can view the ways that derogatory stereotypes advance along with broader socio-cultural trends and changes. A critical media approach also allows the understanding of the media’s influence in the development of the phenomenon of globalization and its culture, today’s center and periphery relations, the power asymmetries of globalization, as they are maintained through the effective dissemination of Western media through the globalized, so-called “free market” framework (Lule, 2018). Furthermore, present day ways of propaganda and political influence will also be discussed while approaching the media through the lens of public sphere theories (Habermas, 1992; Soules, 2015). Drawing on sociology, cultural and political theory and economics, and with the uses of examples drawn from today’s digital media context in particular, the course will discuss how the media industries develop in a globalized and competitive world, and what their political, cultural and economic effects are. In this process, important critical questions will emerge with regards to the ways that technology is developed and distributed in an oligopolistic global media framework, the ways that particular ideological contents are reproduced in various public spheres, along with the symbolic reproduction of geopolitical relations and asymmetries.

Learning Objectives

• The course will equip students with concepts and knowledge to understand media-related phenomena in a systemic, historical and socially embedded sense, as part of a broader socio-political and economic context.
• Students will acquire a better understanding of the forces that shape the development of media as industries and as cultural and socio-political institutions.
• The students will get a better sense of the ways that the media influence society and individuals: the ways that our opinions, preferences, and biases –all connected with a broad range of issues that we deal with daily– are shaped by the media and our uses of them.

Expected Learning Outcomes

• Knowledge of the relevant and up-to-date theories on media sociology and cultural studies.
• Be able to develop their own social research plan on media.
• Be able to perceive academic texts.

Course Contents

• Introduction: media and critical studies
  The critical approach to media studies is an interdisciplinary one, bringing sociology, political science, semiology and psychology to examine the influence of the media in society. Critical media studies are a branch of a broader intellectual tradition of critical social studies with its own philosophy and history that developed in a critical opposition to the “positivist” studies paradigm.
• Culture and ideology
  Culture according to R. Williams a founder of the British cultural studies, is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language. • Culture is a whole way of living of a given community as it can entail all aspects of it, from food habits, to customs to language. • Culture is collective, symbolic and historical; culture is a symbolic entity that has a historical continuity and it is about preserving as well as about changing things too; culture is evolving and is subjected to social changes. • Culture is ideological and a site of contestation; this is an important element here that is often forgotten, which the cultural studies pay attention. • Institutions such as mass media are central in the reproduction of culture and are caught in the ideological debates inherent in the culture; the media are part of today’s culture, mediating key trends that characterize our times. The media are also a site where different social conflicts are reflected in symbolic terms.
• Representing ethnicity and race
  Textual analysis is central in the studies produced by the CCCS; this was further influenced by R. Barthes and his own take on the popular culture forms of contemporary France. Barthes too discussed ideological issues through the analysis of semiotic constructions of media images using ideas of structural linguistics, that Hall and others also made use of. Text analysis in the cultural studies approach concerns the study of media representations. Representation is the practice of speaking on behalf of someone and also concerns the state of being represented. To re-present is also to make present again through the use of signification systems and mediums –intermediates. In that sense, the media stand between reality and their audience. Representation is constitutive of communication/signification processes: we need representational systems to access reality and produce meaning. In this lecture we will be looking upon how things are represented by the media, under which perspectives and what are the implications for them highlighting issues of media biases, particularly when different social identities are concerned. The lecture focuses on the analysis of representations of cultural otherness, regarding the construction of foreigners by the media. Scholarship notes that the media regularly reproduce negative stereotypes of Otherness which often augment existing prejudices in society and fuels racism. As media scholar Teun Van Dijk (2011) notes “Racism is a system of ethnic/racial inequality, reproduced by discriminatory social practices, including discourse, at the local (micro) level, and by institutions, organizations and overall group relations on the global (macro) level, and cognitively supported by racist ideologies.”
• Representing gender and class
  The specific lecture continues on the topic of media representations and focuses on the analysis of media representations of gender and social class. Cultural studies note that the media reproduce sexist depictions of women for commercial purposes which often dehumanize and reduce women and their role in society. On similar grounds, the media reproduce middle and upper class positions and values while often ridiculing the working class and the poor of a society. The lecture will focus on the theory of the “male gaze” as developed by the film critic Laura Mulvey. For Mulvey, a gaze (that is, a dominant way of seeing) is built into cinema, which can be that of the actors but is also part of the medium itself. The man’s role in the film, Mulvey says, is “the active one of forwarding the story, making things happen.” She adds that the man in the story “controls the film fantasy and also emerges as the representative of power in a further sense: as the bearer of the look of the spectator.”
• The media and the public sphere
  This lecture will be discussing Habermas’ known “public sphere” theory and the discussion around it, especially in the context of new media. The public sphere is a highly normative framework to discuss the civic potentials of media to create informed and critical publics and to advance form of citizenship. The media are in this sense to foster and to mediate the formation of public opinion, by stimulating and informing public debate and by functioning as an inclusive public forum that can nurture public belonging and community, while enhancing democratic values, common identity and fraternity among citizens. The normative framework of the ublic sphere is to allow citizens to develop civic skills (such has the ability to listen and to debate), rational thinking, and civic knowledge. The lecture will also discuss the challenges that the public sphere model faces today in contemporary societies. Scholars note a distortion of the public sphere’s critical potential. This is due to the operation of media as commercial businesses, and the commercialization of media content and information, with their emphasis on entertainment. Broader problems concern the development of public opinion techniques and strategic communication, as well as with issues related the phenomena of globalization and audience fragmentation.
• The public sphere theory, new media and participation
  Participation is a term lately used in many disciplines (political science, media studies, urban studies, development). It is generally viewed as a central possibility for democracy, and for the development of the modern individual. In media studies it concerns the changes in the identity of the media consumer due to technological affordances –a user/producer, a prosumer. The lecture will be focusing on the new, digital media realm and their participatory potential in the context of public sphere theory. Several scholars show an optimistic view of new media’s democratic potential (e.g. Carpentier, 2011; Dahlgren, 2009), while others show pessimism over this possibility (e.g. Fuchs, 2014, 2017). The lecture will discuss both positions by using relevant examples.
• The political economy approach: creativity
  This lecture will be using the theory of critical political economy to approach the concept of creativity from a critical perspective. Creativity is nowadays celebrated a social and an economic asset to develop innovation. It is generally seen as an individual potential and skill that requires to be developed. The Canadian urban theorist Richard Florida’s work on the creative class and the creative cities has gained popularity and has been used as a policy making guide to cities across the world so as to achieve economic growth and social development allowing them the ability to foster talents. Florida’s model of creative growth will be discusses, through the categories that he outlines as crucial for the flourishing of creativity at a city level: • Technology • Talent • Toleration The idea of participatory media and the user producer will also be discussed in this context.
• The internet oligopoly under the prism of political economy
  This lecture will include and invited speaker, Nikos Smyrnaios, Associate Professor at the University of Toulouse, France, who will present his work on the advance of digital corporate oligopolies on the internet, using the tools of critical political economy. According to him, “Over the last decade, the digital technologies in everyday life have multiplied. Our lives have been gradually taken over by digital devices, networks, and services. Although useful, they have also become invasive additions to our personal, professional and public lives. This process has occurred in a globalized and deregulated economy and a few US-based start-ups transformed into an oligopoly of multinationals that today govern the informational infrastructure of our societies.”

Assessment Elements

• Attendance
• Working during seminars
• Final essay

Interim Assessment

• Interim assessment (3 module)
  0.1 * Attendance + 0.5 * Final essay + 0.4 * Working during seminars

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Bulmer, M., & Solomos, J. (2004). Researching Race and Racism. London: Routledge. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=114943
• Chouliaraki, L. (2007). The Soft Power of War. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=229974
• Christian Fuchs. (2016). Critical Theory of Communication: New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet. Netherlands, Europe: University of Westminster Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.BC121641
• Dahlgren, P. (1995). Television and the Public Sphere : Citizenship, Democracy and the Media. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=518995
• Jenkins, H. (2006). Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers : Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: NYU Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1021159
• McRobbie, A. (2015). Be Creative : Making a Living in the New Culture Industries. Chicester: Polity. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1158829

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Dudrah, R. K. (2012). Book Review: Representing black Britain: black and asian images on television. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.30FD4476
• Mirzoeff, N. (2012). Watching Babylon : The War in Iraq and Global Visual Culture. Hoboken: Routledge. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=494940
• Skeggs, B. (2004). Class, Self, Culture. London: Routledge. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=661332