Synthesis of Introductory Readings for Media Research
“We think we know who we are, but perhaps
we have only developed into the people
we are allowed to be.”
- Stuart Price (And this might just be the
basis for the next blockbuster movie.)
Important Concepts for the Study of Media
The first batch of readings from six authors laid down concepts and perspectives that are helpful to anyone interested or starting to study the media, and it can be readily noticed that the authors converge at many points of their discussion. It is noteworthy that we media scholars are invited to take a social and historical perspective in studying communication, and warned against simplistic explanations about how meanings circulate in our society.
The Discipline and Our Motives
Stuart Price introduced Media Studies as multi-disciplinary, drawing from anthropology, sociology, psychology, and linguistics, among others. From his ideas I outlined the reasons that establish the importance of Media Studies:
1. Knowledge of media history is important to understand the institutions that produce and disseminate media texts (He already advocates a social and historical perspective here.)
2. Theory guides our action so that our work will not be “derivative” or mere reproduction (Thus a curriculum that adopts a theoretical rather than skills-training approach)
3. To make us realize how the emphasis in messages change as we shift among different media forms (As we first learned in Media Literacy)
4. Media Studies deals with cultural reproduction and discourse which affects everyone exposed. For me, then, engaging in Media Studies is to learn more about ourselves as we explore the factors shaping media institutions which in turn shape how we live. As Roger Silverstone said, “we cannot evade media presence, media representation.” (p. 1) He also argued that because media are central to our day-to-day living, these should be studied “as social, cultural, political and economic dimensions of the modern world.” (p. 2)
5. Cultural hegemony is a reason to study mass media as processes of persuasion (derived from “Culture and Communication”)
6. Finally, I liked what Roger Silverstone said: “Our concern with the media is
always at the same time a concern for the media.” (p. 5) This is a call for application.
Price talked about how different traditions of thought regarding society, have influenced media theory. Liberalism, Marxism, Social Reformism, and Conservatism led to different conceptions on the roles of media:
1. For reliable information to base economic decisions from. Media should not be run by the state. Sensible regulation is necessary. (Liberal)
2. For maintenance of the capitalist state in power (Marxist)
3. To play a constructive part in a mature democracy (Social Reformist)
4. For social cohesion (Conservative)
Views on Communication
Dance and Larsen’s definition of communication puts the individual at the
center of the process. A signifying code refers to any code that allows us to create meaning. I am at this point thinking of camera movement, sound, lighting, and editing techniques. It is interesting to note the argument that “we never get to know the real world, because we understand only the symbolic content we have built up to represent reality.” (Price, 3) Price pointed out that our sense of reality depends on symbols and the referred affecting each other.
Price started with process theories that explain communication, using the example of Watson & Hill and Myers & Myers who looked into the “measurable evidence of communication,” concluding that they are weak in the sense that what lies behind the surface was neglected. Price propelled the idea that an interpersonal and mass communication is not pure, not free from the struggle for influence and power. His pessimism is further seen in his statement that even rhetorical sensitivity is a device for gaining individual power. He led to the idea that the mass media imitate human interaction, addressing us as if we are intimately known. (p. 9 & 34)
At this point, we assume that communication is not being looked at as a simple transmission from point A to point B. The concept of mediation tells us that something is altered in the process. Television, press, film, and radio are all mediation which can affect our perception of events. Message is mediated through language, through a group of professionals, by technology, and through subjectivities of the receivers. (Price, 33) Roger Silverstone explained mediation in relation to translation and hermeneutic motion, that are never perfect. He also compared and contrasted mediation and translation, ending with trust as a precondition for mediation. (p. 18) But we should not miss what Joshua Meyrowitz, in “Mediating Communication” tells us, that we should see TV as more than a passive conduit for ideological messages. That there are other consequences aside from those determined by elite control. I will elaborate on this later in my synthesis.
As I proceed through the readings, I move from arguments for the power of the message, to arguments for the power of the audience who bring their own experiences and readings to bear upon the text... and back again. Particularly interesting is Price’s statement that it can be easy for the audience (here regarded as subordinate) to come up with alternative meanings because these are already present in texts. I call these planned alternatives. Overall, Price rejects simplistic views on how power operates. I appreciated how he wrote with reference to many sources (psychology, literature, sociology, books on media theory). He made me ponder on electives that I will take in the following semesters especially when I encountered representation and how people are formed (growth, language, roles, social norms) through his pages.
Allan O’ Connor and John Downing provided definitions for understanding culture as both a product and process. The importance of such understanding lies in the fact that how we view culture bears on our perception of media’s roles.
Views on Culture
Initially, my personal ideas on culture included cultural products, culture of violence, culture of impunity, workplace culture, and production culture as reflected in the choice of videos, editing, camera work, and hosting styles. Culture for me, is the way we live. It made me think of elements of Filipino culture like hospitality, religiosity (which I distinguish from spirituality which may be evident in the case of the Taiwanese), cooking with the use of sour ingredients which are very abundant in the islands, dining as bonding, malling and the tiangge, texting, Filipino time (which I refuse to accept but still prevails), and love for singing which included us in the map of international music.
Downing and O’Connor invite us to think of culture as an active and
interactive process and ask questions like who produces? What is produced? For whom? They used the painting as an example of cultural production and asked about the artist: “Do they paint how they wish or to make a living?” Parallel to what’s being said in “Culture and Communication” is Silverstone’s proposal to examine “media as process, as a thing doing and a thing done.” (p. 4) It demands an understanding of media as historically specific and politically economic.
They also distinguished popular culture from mass culture, with the former emerging “from the needs, wishes, and hopes of the general public,” (p. 14) and the latter as cultural expressions generated by big businesses to gain profit.
In their discussion on culture and hegemony, I am once again reminded of how my report on the Frankfurt School last semester brought back memories of Mass Society theories. From the view of mass media as hypodermic syringe, to the view that modern societies are immersed in commercially driven mass culture. After all, Frankfurt School was devoted to the study of the media as structures of oppression in capitalistic societies.
Titled “Culture and Communication,” important points were made in the article as: These two do not happen on a level playing field. True enough, what is communicated rarely challenges economic and political power. In the latter part of the article, the authors described Semiology as a tradition of cultural analysis that must be supplemented by the study of historical and political issues.
Let’s Talk TV
As I promised earlier in this paper, we shall look at the other consequences that make television more than a passive conduit, according to Joshua Meyrowitz in the article “Mediating Communication”:
1. The breakdown of traditional distinctions between adult and child, male and female, public and private: We raise our eyebrows on taboo topics that made their way to TV, especially with showbiz intrigues, and on happenings inside the Big Brother house. I felt awkward when contestants cried at Wowowee, broadcasting family problems that they cannot solve in the privacy of their homes, but they can blurt our on national TV. More so with Face to Face.
2. Limitation on the traditional system of adult control (A nice analogy was made between TV and a “new doorway” through which pass “unwelcome visitors”): Here, the author attempted to justify the commonly-heard remark “Iba na ang kabataan ngayon!”
3. Demystification of the masculine (which also made me theorize about men acting like women and women behaving like men)
4. Demystification of leaders: It happens everyday, with almost every news program or live talk show: Officials who cannot give direct answers and whose non-verbal signs give away, or those asked to react on issues which were first known by the anchor, and first-timers whose self-doubt is increased. The author also stated: “The more we see them, the more ordinary they appear.” Could the same be told about PAO Chief Persida Acosta and Valenzuela Councilor Shalani Soledad?
5. Widening of sensory experience (Silverstone also mentioned about media as bodily extensions)
In its entirety, the article by Meyrowitz can be taken as a positive approach
to television, giving an analysis of the “empowering” medium. He said that “we no longer experience political performances as naïve audiences” (p. 49) and this might have helped changing the breed of leaders. When he referred to leaders who no longer act like “imperial leaders of the past,” I am of course thinking of P-Noy whose famous line goes: Kayo ang boss ko.
But then again, we are asked to consider the discrepancies between TV
and reality. Because while the medium may increase our expectations, reality might not be providing opportunities.
The Macro Perspective : Technology
According to Silverstone, technologies do not appear “fully fledged or
perfectly formed. Nor is it ever clear how they will be institutionalized.” And instead of us compartmentalizing technology and culture, the author contended that media technologies can actually be considered as culture: The product of a cultural industry that operates within the structures of late capitalism. Moreover, in his essay titled “Technology,” he said that we can also perceive it as economics. He gave Internet economics as an example, where “information is both the commodity as well as the principle of its management.” (p. 24)
His statement that “the technologies are necessary but not necessarily sufficient conditions for change” can be related to Brian Winston’s essay titled “How Are Media Born and Developed?” Here we are provided a holistic perspective through which we can better appreciate history. From “thin” histories, he wrote samples of thick and thicker accounts, differentiating Technological Determinist and Cultural Determinist. Winston wanted us to focus on why a change happens at a particular period, rather than preoccupying ourselves with dates and figures who are credited for inventions. Technological Determinist A focused on “great men” together with the countries they came from. This manner of accounting for technological innovations has its implications on financial rewards. Technological Determinist B also lacks as it only reflected technical events. For Winston, changes are not merely brought about by available materials and scientific knowledge. He introduced the concepts of supervening social necessity (the accelerators) and law of the suppression of radical potential (brakes). In the context of sound in film, the industry did not readily adopt the technology due to the potential disruption to the profitable silent film business and the “inertia about changing over from the commercially successful method of having live music at each screening.” The observation that the technology was available, but the commercial desire and the need were not also applies to the case of digital broadcasting today.
Winston’s critique of McLuhan’s Technological Determinism ends on a positive note: We can adapt and use technology for our own freely determined purposes. Moreover, Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi believed that “one communications medium does not replace another rather, the new one is added on and often comes to dominate as the older forms take on different functions.” (p. 37) In schools, television may supplement learning from books, but it did not actually substitute them.
Epilogue
After reading and comparing the assigned texts, I believe that we are already equipped and ready to take off. We should bring with us the reminder and challenge of Roger Silverstone who said that it will be difficult for us media scholars to step out of media culture. We cannot deny that the texts we produce are still part of mediation. We agree that this is an epistemological difficulty that requires defamiliarization.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Downing, John, Ali Mohammadi and Annabel Sreberny Mohammadi. (1995). Questioning the Media: A Critical Introduction._Sage Publications.
Price, Stuart. (1998). Media Studies. Pearson Education.
Silverstone, Roger. (1999). Why Study the Media. Sage.
we have only developed into the people
we are allowed to be.”
- Stuart Price (And this might just be the
basis for the next blockbuster movie.)
Important Concepts for the Study of Media
The first batch of readings from six authors laid down concepts and perspectives that are helpful to anyone interested or starting to study the media, and it can be readily noticed that the authors converge at many points of their discussion. It is noteworthy that we media scholars are invited to take a social and historical perspective in studying communication, and warned against simplistic explanations about how meanings circulate in our society.
The Discipline and Our Motives
Stuart Price introduced Media Studies as multi-disciplinary, drawing from anthropology, sociology, psychology, and linguistics, among others. From his ideas I outlined the reasons that establish the importance of Media Studies:
1. Knowledge of media history is important to understand the institutions that produce and disseminate media texts (He already advocates a social and historical perspective here.)
2. Theory guides our action so that our work will not be “derivative” or mere reproduction (Thus a curriculum that adopts a theoretical rather than skills-training approach)
3. To make us realize how the emphasis in messages change as we shift among different media forms (As we first learned in Media Literacy)
4. Media Studies deals with cultural reproduction and discourse which affects everyone exposed. For me, then, engaging in Media Studies is to learn more about ourselves as we explore the factors shaping media institutions which in turn shape how we live. As Roger Silverstone said, “we cannot evade media presence, media representation.” (p. 1) He also argued that because media are central to our day-to-day living, these should be studied “as social, cultural, political and economic dimensions of the modern world.” (p. 2)
5. Cultural hegemony is a reason to study mass media as processes of persuasion (derived from “Culture and Communication”)
6. Finally, I liked what Roger Silverstone said: “Our concern with the media is
always at the same time a concern for the media.” (p. 5) This is a call for application.
Price talked about how different traditions of thought regarding society, have influenced media theory. Liberalism, Marxism, Social Reformism, and Conservatism led to different conceptions on the roles of media:
1. For reliable information to base economic decisions from. Media should not be run by the state. Sensible regulation is necessary. (Liberal)
2. For maintenance of the capitalist state in power (Marxist)
3. To play a constructive part in a mature democracy (Social Reformist)
4. For social cohesion (Conservative)
Views on Communication
Dance and Larsen’s definition of communication puts the individual at the
center of the process. A signifying code refers to any code that allows us to create meaning. I am at this point thinking of camera movement, sound, lighting, and editing techniques. It is interesting to note the argument that “we never get to know the real world, because we understand only the symbolic content we have built up to represent reality.” (Price, 3) Price pointed out that our sense of reality depends on symbols and the referred affecting each other.
Price started with process theories that explain communication, using the example of Watson & Hill and Myers & Myers who looked into the “measurable evidence of communication,” concluding that they are weak in the sense that what lies behind the surface was neglected. Price propelled the idea that an interpersonal and mass communication is not pure, not free from the struggle for influence and power. His pessimism is further seen in his statement that even rhetorical sensitivity is a device for gaining individual power. He led to the idea that the mass media imitate human interaction, addressing us as if we are intimately known. (p. 9 & 34)
At this point, we assume that communication is not being looked at as a simple transmission from point A to point B. The concept of mediation tells us that something is altered in the process. Television, press, film, and radio are all mediation which can affect our perception of events. Message is mediated through language, through a group of professionals, by technology, and through subjectivities of the receivers. (Price, 33) Roger Silverstone explained mediation in relation to translation and hermeneutic motion, that are never perfect. He also compared and contrasted mediation and translation, ending with trust as a precondition for mediation. (p. 18) But we should not miss what Joshua Meyrowitz, in “Mediating Communication” tells us, that we should see TV as more than a passive conduit for ideological messages. That there are other consequences aside from those determined by elite control. I will elaborate on this later in my synthesis.
As I proceed through the readings, I move from arguments for the power of the message, to arguments for the power of the audience who bring their own experiences and readings to bear upon the text... and back again. Particularly interesting is Price’s statement that it can be easy for the audience (here regarded as subordinate) to come up with alternative meanings because these are already present in texts. I call these planned alternatives. Overall, Price rejects simplistic views on how power operates. I appreciated how he wrote with reference to many sources (psychology, literature, sociology, books on media theory). He made me ponder on electives that I will take in the following semesters especially when I encountered representation and how people are formed (growth, language, roles, social norms) through his pages.
Allan O’ Connor and John Downing provided definitions for understanding culture as both a product and process. The importance of such understanding lies in the fact that how we view culture bears on our perception of media’s roles.
Views on Culture
Initially, my personal ideas on culture included cultural products, culture of violence, culture of impunity, workplace culture, and production culture as reflected in the choice of videos, editing, camera work, and hosting styles. Culture for me, is the way we live. It made me think of elements of Filipino culture like hospitality, religiosity (which I distinguish from spirituality which may be evident in the case of the Taiwanese), cooking with the use of sour ingredients which are very abundant in the islands, dining as bonding, malling and the tiangge, texting, Filipino time (which I refuse to accept but still prevails), and love for singing which included us in the map of international music.
Downing and O’Connor invite us to think of culture as an active and
interactive process and ask questions like who produces? What is produced? For whom? They used the painting as an example of cultural production and asked about the artist: “Do they paint how they wish or to make a living?” Parallel to what’s being said in “Culture and Communication” is Silverstone’s proposal to examine “media as process, as a thing doing and a thing done.” (p. 4) It demands an understanding of media as historically specific and politically economic.
They also distinguished popular culture from mass culture, with the former emerging “from the needs, wishes, and hopes of the general public,” (p. 14) and the latter as cultural expressions generated by big businesses to gain profit.
In their discussion on culture and hegemony, I am once again reminded of how my report on the Frankfurt School last semester brought back memories of Mass Society theories. From the view of mass media as hypodermic syringe, to the view that modern societies are immersed in commercially driven mass culture. After all, Frankfurt School was devoted to the study of the media as structures of oppression in capitalistic societies.
Titled “Culture and Communication,” important points were made in the article as: These two do not happen on a level playing field. True enough, what is communicated rarely challenges economic and political power. In the latter part of the article, the authors described Semiology as a tradition of cultural analysis that must be supplemented by the study of historical and political issues.
Let’s Talk TV
As I promised earlier in this paper, we shall look at the other consequences that make television more than a passive conduit, according to Joshua Meyrowitz in the article “Mediating Communication”:
1. The breakdown of traditional distinctions between adult and child, male and female, public and private: We raise our eyebrows on taboo topics that made their way to TV, especially with showbiz intrigues, and on happenings inside the Big Brother house. I felt awkward when contestants cried at Wowowee, broadcasting family problems that they cannot solve in the privacy of their homes, but they can blurt our on national TV. More so with Face to Face.
2. Limitation on the traditional system of adult control (A nice analogy was made between TV and a “new doorway” through which pass “unwelcome visitors”): Here, the author attempted to justify the commonly-heard remark “Iba na ang kabataan ngayon!”
3. Demystification of the masculine (which also made me theorize about men acting like women and women behaving like men)
4. Demystification of leaders: It happens everyday, with almost every news program or live talk show: Officials who cannot give direct answers and whose non-verbal signs give away, or those asked to react on issues which were first known by the anchor, and first-timers whose self-doubt is increased. The author also stated: “The more we see them, the more ordinary they appear.” Could the same be told about PAO Chief Persida Acosta and Valenzuela Councilor Shalani Soledad?
5. Widening of sensory experience (Silverstone also mentioned about media as bodily extensions)
In its entirety, the article by Meyrowitz can be taken as a positive approach
to television, giving an analysis of the “empowering” medium. He said that “we no longer experience political performances as naïve audiences” (p. 49) and this might have helped changing the breed of leaders. When he referred to leaders who no longer act like “imperial leaders of the past,” I am of course thinking of P-Noy whose famous line goes: Kayo ang boss ko.
But then again, we are asked to consider the discrepancies between TV
and reality. Because while the medium may increase our expectations, reality might not be providing opportunities.
The Macro Perspective : Technology
According to Silverstone, technologies do not appear “fully fledged or
perfectly formed. Nor is it ever clear how they will be institutionalized.” And instead of us compartmentalizing technology and culture, the author contended that media technologies can actually be considered as culture: The product of a cultural industry that operates within the structures of late capitalism. Moreover, in his essay titled “Technology,” he said that we can also perceive it as economics. He gave Internet economics as an example, where “information is both the commodity as well as the principle of its management.” (p. 24)
His statement that “the technologies are necessary but not necessarily sufficient conditions for change” can be related to Brian Winston’s essay titled “How Are Media Born and Developed?” Here we are provided a holistic perspective through which we can better appreciate history. From “thin” histories, he wrote samples of thick and thicker accounts, differentiating Technological Determinist and Cultural Determinist. Winston wanted us to focus on why a change happens at a particular period, rather than preoccupying ourselves with dates and figures who are credited for inventions. Technological Determinist A focused on “great men” together with the countries they came from. This manner of accounting for technological innovations has its implications on financial rewards. Technological Determinist B also lacks as it only reflected technical events. For Winston, changes are not merely brought about by available materials and scientific knowledge. He introduced the concepts of supervening social necessity (the accelerators) and law of the suppression of radical potential (brakes). In the context of sound in film, the industry did not readily adopt the technology due to the potential disruption to the profitable silent film business and the “inertia about changing over from the commercially successful method of having live music at each screening.” The observation that the technology was available, but the commercial desire and the need were not also applies to the case of digital broadcasting today.
Winston’s critique of McLuhan’s Technological Determinism ends on a positive note: We can adapt and use technology for our own freely determined purposes. Moreover, Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi believed that “one communications medium does not replace another rather, the new one is added on and often comes to dominate as the older forms take on different functions.” (p. 37) In schools, television may supplement learning from books, but it did not actually substitute them.
Epilogue
After reading and comparing the assigned texts, I believe that we are already equipped and ready to take off. We should bring with us the reminder and challenge of Roger Silverstone who said that it will be difficult for us media scholars to step out of media culture. We cannot deny that the texts we produce are still part of mediation. We agree that this is an epistemological difficulty that requires defamiliarization.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Downing, John, Ali Mohammadi and Annabel Sreberny Mohammadi. (1995). Questioning the Media: A Critical Introduction._Sage Publications.
Price, Stuart. (1998). Media Studies. Pearson Education.
Silverstone, Roger. (1999). Why Study the Media. Sage.
