What is media?
“Our smell is media” - Jacob [Level 1 Animation
student] (it communicates)
- A tool
- Exposure to social groups and practices
- Information
Also: physical form? Books were once new media (Penguin
Classics were once considered trash because they were paperbacks)
Video games and the internet are more niche –
narrowcast [opposite of broadcast]
The first media was oral tradition – limited by what
could be remembered
Stone and clay created a BODY of knowledge (production
of a canon) – limited by literacy* (power system) – privileging
of access; privileging of written history
*Television isn't limited this way because it's visual
(wider audience)
The Masses – Marx's term for the working class;
negative connotations (lumping people together)
The Frankfurt School (Jewish intellectuals) – their
reflections on mass media were influenced by their views on
propaganda
False and true needs
High versus mass culture – the former is DIFFICULT;
stimulates you
Homogeneous music; movies; politics
Walter Benjamin: fusing culture with commerce opens it
up to more people
Think about your own practice – how does media impact
it? Is the “original” of any value? → For film, the
reproduction IS the original – Benjamin talked about this
Analogue: limited
Digital: infinite
Reproduction democratises media
Stuart Hall – cultural critic; talks about
representation in the media, a more complex subject than it seems
(RE-presentation; “standing in for” - giving meaning to
the things depicted)
Editorial control – owners of media control what
images are shown
“Folk devils” - misrepresenting a group of people
(scapegoated); “chavs” [are] a modern example
Moral panic – 2008 riots – working versus middle
class (the media took the latter side)
Female celebrities who exhibit “chavvy” behaviour
are attacked – repetition of language and images
Freedom of the press co-exists with societal
constraints** – privacy and copyright laws – GATEKEEPERS
Rise of amateur content (citizen journalists; bloggers)
**They move - they're not “fixed”
The “long tail” - increasingly obscure content
(information) is available
All of this affects the way we interact with media
Magazines, books, etc. are becoming mixed format
A tussle between old and new
Tastemakers – rottentomatoes, YouTube curating; news
aggregates
The web is deemed democratic, but we can't all
engage – coverage of broadband limits access
Who's paying for the advertising? Advertisers have a
huge cloud
38.9% of the world is connected to the internet – not
a lot, really
There are privacy issues (data mining), but also
freedoms – Arab Spring; bloggers in China; beating X Factor to
number one
“Clicktivism”- the internet CAN do these things, but
it often gets swamped
No comments:
Post a Comment