18 thoughts on “Week 3 – Media and Social Change (T2)”
#ZHAO YUTONG#
I posted my reply on 29th JAN. but it said that” your comment is awaiting moderation” which I don’t quite understand what dose it mean. And I can’t find it on respoonse board. So I post here again.
According to Habermas, the public sphere means a sphere which mediates between society and state, in which the public organizes itself as the bearer or public opinion, and it must accord with the principle of public sphere. In today’s society, it is not hard to find examples that public sphere plays an indispensable role as a mediator between society and state.
Not only does it provide opportunities for people to communicate and bond each other (like a bridge), but also great facilitate people’s lives. With the development of the social media technology, it is much convenient for people to share their ideas and feelings with others, and politic leaders could get good use of it to advocate or gain supports. What’s more, it also enables advertisers, business people, public relations workers to enhance corporate images and gain benefits.
When we talk about media, there not only have to be users, receptors, but also people who encode and decode the message so that we could gain the information effectively. And in large part majority, people don’t preview the public in particular manner that public emerge out of specific form of the media, according to Habermas, that is for him printed material like newspapers. And creating public sphere, it’s very much for him a kind of root of democracy he has in mind.
Thompson argues that the analysis of culture and mass communication should be regarded as central concerns of sociology and social theory, and he also puts forward a framework for the analysis of culture and shows how this framework can be applies to the study of mass communication. And I totally agree with the idea that the nature of culture experience in modern societies has been profoundly affected by the development of mass communication like books, newspapers and television. In my opinion, writing is the key step of all work, and it’s no doubt that languages make things easier. The essence of media is help people to gain and distribute knowledge and information
Sakino Tan
I relate very well with Thompson’s reading as he mentions that we have to consider not just the messages that we see as a final product. Especially when he mentioned about ideology, the power relations and relations of domination behind the corporations that display mass media often has hidden agendas and conveys different meanings. A few years ago, I was very shocked to find out that Disney owns ESPN as well as the ABC channel and bought over the ownership of Star Wars. This monopoly that they have would mean that there is definitely the same interest across all industries. Having different mediums to reach out to different audiences is something that the audience must reflect on. Therefore, although technology has made our lives better, the people behind the technologies may take advantage of the technologies.
Technology has also made our lives better by allowing for a greater public sphere through the internet and social media platforms however, it is true that it is not entirely ‘free’. There are still restrictions on this public sphere especially in Singapore. When Amy Cheong posted her racist comment on Malay weddings at the void deck, it was such a controversy that sparked headline news. The government had to intervene and comment on her action as well. Therefore, although the internet is a way to express yourself freely, it is still regulated to some extent as there are watchdogs around.
White made a point that the social-historical context must be taken into account of each invention. I feel that sometimes we take for granted the technologies that we have today. If he did not mention the example of the button, I would not have realised how great its importance is especially in a cold country. Although one must understand how an invention come about. Not all inventions can be explained, since he mentioned that some inventions have different uses in different parts of the world in the past when the world was not as global as today. In today’s context, the world is more homogenous as the technologies have made everyone more and more interconnected with each other. Therefore, cultures and traditions and ways of life are more diffused across the globe.
Thompson has definitely emphasized on cultural reflexivity, never to take the media messages at face value. This makes me more suspicious of many things though.
Jessica-Ann Vendawall
Being a student majoring in Marketing I thought it’d be interesting if I could make a link between the readings and what I’ve been taught in Business, each week.
What stood out to me this week was this notion of mass in Thompson’s readings and how it allows for this sense of ‘globality’ as discussed during our lecture. In the modern era, technology and mass communication has fueled this ability for us to have shared experiences and a collective memory, by enabling us to participate in issues ”beyond our immediate social milieu”. Thompson goes on to say that we need to pay more attention to “the complex processes involved in the production and reception of media messages”. Mass communication is seen as a medium that is also an ideological apparatus because it not only serves to spread the message but also leaves it open for interpretation.
What came to mind when this was discussed was that this is exactly why advertising is such an important and interesting tool in the modern era. Advertising is almost always attached to some form of media and mass communication and this existence of the ‘mass’ such as the ‘mass market’ allows advertisers to create advertisements with a specific message that can reach a greater audience. However, to go one step further, because media is a channel that also makes such advertisements open to interpretation this has further increased the importance of advertisements in determining the success of a product.
Vienna
I was taken with Thompson’s comparison of Mass Communication and how it differs from face to face communication in different ways. The one that especially strikes me is ‘information storage mechanisms affect the nature of the message itself and endow it with a permanence… everyday interactions don’t have.’
I have never been one to post a status or anything for that matter on the Internet because I do not like the idea that there is something that I have said that cannot be erased. Yes, it maybe taken down but by then who knows how many people have taken a screenshot of it. Technology has moved in such a direction that although it has empowered many to speak up with the promise of anonymity, it has also silenced a few who feel that such a medium with its unforgiving nature, is not an appropriate medium to freely air their views and they would rather not participate. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/30/facebook-anonymous_n_4694577.html Facebook is in the process of allowing anonymity because “If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.” This in some ways solves the nature of the message being affected due to the storage of information but at what cost to our humanness? Now ‘real identity’ has become a burden and I recall last weeks Heidegger reading where now we have a standing reserve of virtual selves at our disposal.
Diyana Mohd
The Habermasian notion of the “public sphere” does not hold any water to me, as it is idealistic and ignorant of how society is (unequally) stratified. Marx would argue that depending on one’s class location, one would conceive different material experiences, ideas etc hence starkly different material reality (rich vs poor, capitalist vs proletariat). So this “public sphere” has demarcated boundaries of who is let to belong and not belong in debate and creating discourse. So the last time I check, how is this democratic? And I can argue using Bourdieu’s term capital – economic, cultural, social – and the differential levels the rich, educated man vs the poor bloke have, where the former has amassed capital that is more recognized and valued than the latter. Bourdieu also has the concept of habitus and practice, which is easily applicable: say, if you live in a technologically advanced country where there are all kinds of gadgets everywhere, you are living in a habitus where you can freely practice using or adopting (McLuhan’s term) such technological objects. Then imagine being somewhere remote and rural. Technology won’t mean anything. This logic is in line with the key point that technology is therefore contextual.
Another thing, I was at first cynical about the formation of public sphere in the new media ie. the virtual sphere. But then again, some online mavericks will find subversive strategies to challenge the status quo, hence bringing the point that there are unconquerable limits to the public sphere. This is because that modern technology allows things (messages, channels etc) to be fluid and elusive to be contained and regulated.
I liked Thompson’s reading as it has the inclination towards symbolism and implicit messages that forms of media carry. The idea of encoding reminds me Roland Barthes’s Rhetoric of the Image of what connotes and denotes, and critical media literacy where media are studied as texts. I guess these strategies allows for self-knowledge and critical thinking, much that is being said and suggested in Heidegger’s and White’s. These are solutions to combat messages/media texts riddled with dominant ideologies. Then one can become disillusioned and gain consciousness.
Dionne See
While reading the 3 articles, I seriously had no idea why were those readings were assigned to us because they all seemed like they were talking about really random things and not related to each other. Especially the White’s article when he went on talking about inventions here and there.
But now, all these make sense because understanding technology is not only about what has been invented, not about how it will be useful. Instead, it is very important to take into account the historicity of the technology because everything indeed happens for a reason and also how we cannot only simply understand the uses of these technology.
Technology is social, I completely agree with how he debunks the Genius Hypothesis because just look at how many technology have now been used for functions that were not initially intended. Furthermore how in today’s society, we overlook so many minute details and creations and only emphasize on the really impressive technology and their uses. We can lament about how impressive our iphones are, lament about how impressive those applications are. But we tend to forget the historicity of the iphones or even the historicity of the earlier forms of communications – if we gave an iphone to a clan in a really remote place, they would probably not even know what it can do and probably use the iphone as paper weight (random)? So to understand a cultural object like this, we have to take into account several other factors like location, class, economy, even norms.
This can also be linked to Thompson’s idea of mass communication. Distribution, interpretation and redistribution of ideas, ideologies also have to consider the following above. We can not study something as a single entity anymore.
Clarinda Ong
After reading Habermas’s article, I’ve learnt that his definition of ‘public sphere’ is that everyone is entitled to have access and use of information to affect someone’s personal opinion. When I think about ‘public sphere’ in a more simplistic manner, it will be freedom of formation of public opinion & this freedom will influence a person’s life and the larger society. Mass media tend to use public sphere in presenting multiple perspectives just to change public opinion. It is difficult to be immune from the biased views within the public sphere and furthermore, Internet made it so easy to get information in any manner. Internet as a complex whole, it has a history, it didn’t just came about over one night. It is involved in a process where people adapted to technologies to suit their current society form.
Technologies changes throughout history and now we can see how they progressed and still progressing in this modern era. Habermas mentioned that during the Enlightenment period in the 18th century, ideas of ‘public sphere’ and ‘public opinion’ started forming. From the earliest forms of technology (eg: printing press, newspapers…) spreading thinking in a more specified locale (like in Europe, etc) to the currently superb Internet, which allows mass communication across the world, without the worry of temporal and spatial differentials. Changes in technologies really empower people with knowledge at an ever amazing speed and quantity.
In my opinion, it is very difficult to categorize ‘private opinion’ and ‘public opinion’ and sometimes, these two may even overlap. Public sphere is so powerful nowadays that even private information appeared on it unknowingly, or unintentionally? It is very convenient for individuals to voice their own views to the public through online platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and this make people powerful in relation to the state. Private affairs flooding in the public sphere may not be good; it means people have to start contemplating whether it is a ‘private opinion’ or a ‘public opinion’ once they’ve received information online.
It is also important to note that although most people have access to Internet, there are still limitations with regards to the political sphere, which may restricts information available to the public. (Example: The Chinese government going head-strong against Google on issue of Censorship Source – http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703956604576110453371369740 ) This is evidence of situations where Governmental authorities will always lookout for their own interests.
My summary point of Lynn White’s article is that technological creativity is not unitary, it is multi-faceted. Another crucial point to note throughout the whole article is that, for technological innovation, its simple idea may evolve and expansion to a whole new concept and it is also an inevitable process. Usually the intent of the inventors will be skewed to the intent of users accordingly in the social-historical settings and they may differ. For example, a button is not just a button but it provides security and warmth for the children when their mothers buttoned them up in winter. It is not so much of a straightforward relation, but there must be some interpretations to it too.
This is also related to Thompson argument of distinctive characteristics of mass communication. There are different categories of differentiating mass communication through ‘classical’, ‘descriptive’, ‘symbolic’ and ‘structural’ ways. The ‘button’ example enables us to use these varying categories to explain its meaning and value. According to Thompson, ‘meaning and power intersects’. Thus, he thinks that ‘the study of ideology is to study the ways in which meaning serves to sustain relations of domination’, and this boils down to “power relations”.
Iman
I think what is interesting from the readings of this week is that although at first glance they seem to be completely redundant information, there is more than meets the eye. For example with White, I couldn’t get why she was rambling on and on about seemingly mundane things and exploring the histories of something as small as the button. Interestingly with closer inspection and greater understanding, we see how technology (be it as impressive as computers or perhaps as small as buttons) are interconnected and shouldn’t be seen as singular spectacular events. The innocuous button changes our way of life, from the way we make our clothing to the way we move. Like there shouldn’t be a sense of heroism and romanticism linked to that particular finding of technology. I can glean from White’s reading that every small progress leads to the bigger finding which people tend to overlook. Technology does not exist in a vacuum, there are socio-historical contexts that lead to the creation of certain types of technology.
Maxly Inthaxai
As the result of Habermas ‘s article, the public sphere is an important part of social life which approaching all public opinion without the position in the society. Another side of the public sphere still has the state that mean the public sphere do not overlap, but designate that sphere is an public antiquity as understand as private opinion.
Continually Habermas gave some article of the public sphere in the social welfare state mass democracy, which control the mass of organized in form the social welfare state. It all kind of like public sphere is a product of media in the globalization and the private sphere is kind of something normally and depending on the democratic in the modern life.
Additionally, media is a part of people from the idea and ability of the modern state, but focusing on the rule of the democracy is depending on the government in nowadays and it is a big deals that media can be transfer all the information particularly in the history of society technology in the communication.
The functionally of media that it seem be most specific in the society is about the part of technology and history of human being. Hence, the technology in the society might be come from the understanding of human and also the innovation of the understanding in the culture identify in the largest communication.
Maria Yutong Zhao
According to Habermas, the public sphere means a sphere which mediates between society and state, in which the public organizes itself as the bearer or public opinion, and it must accord with the principle of public sphere. In today’s society, it is not hard to find examples that public sphere plays an indispensable role as a mediator between society and state.
Not only does it provide opportunities for people to communicate and bond each other (like a bridge), but it also great facilitates people’s lives. With the development of the social media technology, it is much convenient for people to voice their ideas and share their feelings with others, (like I-Media and other social media like Facebook and Weibo) and it leads to self-betterment. Although comments restriction still exists in some area, in this case, government get to realize that they are deluding people if they stop people from telling truth.
What’s more, public sphere also enables advertisers, business people, public relations workers to enhance corporate images and gain benefits. And politic leaders could also get good use of it to advocate or gain supports.
When we talk about media, there not only have to be users, receptors, but also people who encode and decode the message so that we could gain information effectively. And in large part majority, we don’t preview the public in particular manner that public emerge out of specific form of the media, according to Habermas, that is for him printed material like newspapers. And creating public sphere, it’s very much for him a kind of root of democracy he has in mind.
Thompson argues that the analysis of culture and mass communication should be regarded as central concerns of sociology and social theory, and he also puts forward a framework for the analysis of culture and shows how this framework can be applies to the study of mass communication. And I totally agree with the idea that the nature of culture experience in modern societies has been profoundly affected by the development of mass communication like books, newspapers and television. In my opinion, writing is the key step of all work, and it’s no doubt that languages make things easier. The essence of media is to help people to gain and distribute knowledge and information, and the purpose of mass media can only be achieved by mutual efforts: sending and receiving. Media wouldn’t mean anything if no one receive it.
Cheryl Chern
Habermas talks about the public sphere, which is a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Access to the public sphere is available to all citizens. With the public spehere, communication has changed and it now requires specific means of transmitting information and influences those who receive it. The audience thus decode the message that is being communicated to them. The public sphere allows also for people to express their concerns and voice their opinions on issues that may concern them.
Habermas sheds light on the history of the public sphere and we see what was deemed public in the past was merely a public representation of power. This meant that those who had power represent their power “before” the people instead of for the people. The bourgeois public sphere then became the sphere of private individuals assembled into a public body, and they took control of the “intellectual newspapers” for use against the public authority itself. The newspaper thus played an important role later when they were often used by political parties with a political agenda. Hence the press found itself as the mediator and intensifier of public discussion, instead of just being a tool for the spreading of news.
In today’s society, we are also able to see how the public sphere is the mediator between the state and the society and the media institutions have a major part to play. We have seen how political leaders and parties (in Singapore and many parts of the world) make use of the different forms of media especially social media platforms such as facebook, to garner support from the masses. It is also not surprising to see how people are able to voice their personal opinions through such similar means as well.
Audrey
White paints a paradoxical illustration on technology, using basic tools as examples to explain how humans interact with technology. She begins with talking about coins as forms of currency, illustrating how technology can be tools that aid human communication and that not equivalent to modernity. In fact, humans utilized technology way back, intrinsically linked to humans’ development of knowledge.
For example, a coin (currency) is a tool in which people assign shared meaning in order to communicate.
“If technology is defined as the systematic modification of the physical environment for human ends, it follows that a more exact understanding of technological innovation is essential to self-knowledge,” she also says.
To me, this means that if we truly understand technology, we understand ourselves and what we want. As discussed last week (Heidegger), the essence of technology is not in the science, but how we want to utilize it and alter our lives.
This essence of technology is illustrated in White’s argument about how people use “a charging stallion (to) deliver the blow”.
“Now the warrior could lay his lance at rest between his upper arm and body: the blow was delivered not by the arm but by the force of a charging stallion.”
This illustration is also an uncanny parallel of modern weaponry that creates a sense of detachment between perpetrators and their victims. As discussed in tutorial last week, drones, are types of aircrafts that can operate without a pilot. These aircrafts may carry bombs to be released on enemy territories.
The blow delivered not by the arm.
The bomb was not released by a man –
But, by the force of a drone.
This effectively shifts the blame to the ‘brutality’ of technology, from the fundamental human intention behind the weapon. It legitimizes violence by lessening the responsibility of the action.
Habermas offers insight to the public and private spheres, defining who constitutes the different spheres.
I would assume that an example of public spheres, which are defined as the “realm of our social life where public opinion is formed”, would include civil societies. Habermas cites newspapers to be a tool of forming public opinion.
There is plenty of discourse questioning whether there is truly a space for public opinions to form in Singapore. Does this mean that there is no public opinions in countries with tight regulation of expressions of alternative views from the state?
Kerri Heng Yi Ping
My answer, like Yuan Ting’s above, may be informal and frank at times, seeing as this is a blog entry 🙂
The Public Sphere: An Encyclopaedia Article
I find it interesting how the public and private spheres have been reversed since the 20th Century (moving of royalty and religious leaders to the private sphere, and increased movement of individual opinion to the public sphere, through the use of mass media.)
The article suggests that Democracy promotes more expression of public opinion – meaning one has more freedom to express his/her views publicly. The people had more say, via the newspapers and TV (during the author’s time) and they have even more say today, in the age of social media and citizen journalism. Perhaps it’d be interesting to explore the responsibility that comes with the expression of public opinion. In the past, religious and royal leaders had the final word, and their views represented everyone’s views. This could mean a more stifled past for the common folk. But perhaps they didn’t have to think about what they said, because whatever their opinions were would not have held water. Today, with simple Internet access, almost everyone in Democratic states can express their views freely in the public sphere. Emotions can run high with the influx of conflicting, contrasting opinions that bombard us daily. (I’m thinking about Anton Casey here.) True, more freedom of expression on more platforms is a great thing as it promotes freedom and Democratic ideals. However, could this ‘freedom’ get out of hand? Could this ‘freedom’ go unchecked? I’m thinking freedom of expression on the public sphere is great, but it has to come with a form of self-responsibility/self-regulation.
And the idea that business owners are in the private sphere and that Democratic governments are in the public sphere truly reflects how we live today. Big Business is private and concerned with profit-making while Big Brother is public and concerned with state welfare. But it is ironic that Big Business, being in the private sphere, actually controls much of our everyday lives? (How many corporations and conglomerates rule our world today? How much control do they exert over the products we consume?) Big Business is in the private sphere, but I think that it is directly involved in the lives of people all over the world (being involved the lives of millions of people isn’t exactly a private thing, methinks).
It is ironic how there are “Public Relations” departments in almost every agency (public or private). Governments (Big Brother) have them to regulate their press statements and media responses, private businesses have them to make sure that they portray a desirable/good image. Like the article suggests, the public sphere seems to be “arduously constructed case by case”. It is constructed, crafted and planned to look/sound a certain way. Where does that leave the public sphere being an arena of free voices? How are voices free if they are regulated? Is the public sphere, as suggested in the article, compromised to suit certain ‘tastes’ of the people? Are there greater forces that influence what the public sphere should be, even though it is supposed to be the voice of the people? (For example, political/economic agendas.)
Mass Communication and Modern Culture:
It is really refreshing to see mass communication as ideological. During my Poly days as a media student, I never thought of it this way. Of course, we knew about propaganda being used to spread direct messages, but I didn’t realise that mass communication can be the ideology itself. How the media is not necessarily just a means to an end and how the media is not just this awesome tool used to entertain people (radio, soap operas, etc).
The Television viewing example in the article really reminds me of an example brought up during HS2004 lecture, helmed by Prof Patrick Williams. He said that TV shows can actually be highlighting/promoting a certain type of culture. For instance, there could be more TV programmes featuring heterosexual relationships than TV programmes featuring homosexual relationships. Could this be sending an ideological message on the kind of relationships we ‘ought’ to be in?
Another way in which the mass media (mass comms) is the ideology is that of Singapore’s media monopoly. All of our mainstream/mass media groups (TV and Radio) are owned by Mediacorp or Singapore Press Holdings – and the government has a substantial stake in them. Many ideological messages are transmitted via Singapore’s mass media, such as the building up of families, working hard in school, going to serve National Service, and the emphasis on filial piety in programmes. The messages are embedded in programme storylines. (Eg: TV dramas featuring school children who work hard in school, respect their teachers, get good grades and get good jobs.) These messages point to Meritocracy, Singapore’s Low Birth Rate, Singapore’s lack of natural resources and perhaps, certain forms of Confucianism (respect for parents and elders).
Sasha Kaur Dhillon
John Thompson’s paper – “ Mass Communication And Modern Culture: Contribution To A Critical Theory Of Ideology” appealed to me the most out of the three readings. This is primarily because I find it ever so relatable to the way in which individuals ( myself, included) consume culture. Thompson reflects and critically analyzes how media messages are produced, constructed and absorbed by individuals. In relating this to a cultural perspective, the media messages could be seen as the cultural object of significance/shared value and interpreted using the cultural diamond model.
Firstly, a rather interesting point that Thompson raises is that “ cultural phenomena do not subsist in a vacuum”. By this he implies that cultural objects – both tangible ( Apple Laptops) and intangible ( Miley Cyrus’s twerking video) do not just stay put in the location or community in which they are produced but expand via mass media into temporal and special dimensions far beyond their immediate capacity. I find this in itself to be a phenomenon produced directly by mass media. This is due to the effect of immediacy with which such cultural phenomena are transmitted and to the wide variety of the audience ( virtually everyone and anyone who has access to technology) that it reaches out to. Although not explicit in its effects, I feel that such a transmission mechanism shrinks the world we live in both temporally and geographically. What happens in one country is always the other country’s headlining news. This is interesting because it shows that mass media diminishes boundaries of a local culture and spreads it to become one of global significance – whether adopted or not. While its origins can definitely be traced, its participants can come from almost anywhere in the world.
Furthermore, this allows individuals the autonomy ( in some instances) to choose what kind of cultural phenomena they wish to be engaged in. If the American way of life appeals to me and I wish to embody it – I choose the iPhone. If the European way of life appeals to me – I choose the Blackberry. Bearing in mind of course, that mass media propagates these cultural notions to its consumers and thus gives them the outlook into what cultural commodities offer them in their symbolic representations. This would not have been the case had it not been for mass media. This point too was noted by Thomson who rightfully compared older modes of transmission by saying “ Prior to the development of the popular press and broadcasting, most cultural forms and processes were produced and reproduced through oral language and face-to-face interaction.” Such forms of transmission do not have the pictorial effects or marketing slogans that advertising in new media grants to consumers in modern times.
Next, Thompson also claims that culture can be deemed as an “ ideological apparatus” to be propagated through the means of mass media. What this essentially suggests is a top-down approach where those in power can selectively choose what to propagate and what to censor, to their own advantage. Such a form of domination is relevant to Marx’s theory of conflict where the dominant class imposes their beliefs on the less dominant class and creates a sense of false consciousness. Applying this to mass culture in this respect, for instance, the government such as the Singapore government only allows certain forms of media to be propagated openly to the general public. Censorship is heavily exercised and thus this runs the risk of whether the culture portrayed in such a top-down approach is falsified to some extent. While there isn’t and should not be a dimension of truth or false in cultural objects ( since they are open to interpretation) it is interesting to wonder how such an approach shapes the cultural mindsets of people rather than exposing them wholesomely to culture as it is produced. Therefore, I feel that in this instance there could be a sense of competing ideologies between the culture that is produced via mass media and the culture that is being allowed to be transmitted via mass media to society.
Another interesting point that Thomson raises is the commodification of culture via mass media. This is particularly accurate in terms how the messages in mass media communication are construed by the audience. To understand this though, we have to reflect upon how these mass media messages are produced. Thompson posits that one of the most distinctive forms of such production mechanisms is marked by interdeterminacy. This is with respect to the fact that the messages must be produced and transmitted or diffused in the absence of direct and continuous monitoring of audience response. This involves a variety of strategies such as audience monitoring devices. While this is undeniably effective, I feel that is a rather robotic and engineered form of cultural production. It’s almost as if the same formula is being used over and over again and there is simply no means of adding some form of creativity – for fear that it might not work with the audience. This might create a message that is overly repeated and people might start believing that what they watch on TV is the norm and there is nothing much to think about it because it would not change as frequently.
Although Thomson, does make some attempts at mentioning that consumers of mass media are not undiscerning sponges and actively participate in deciphering the meanings that cultural objects displayed to them have, I feel that this is easier said than done. This is primarily because, we are flooded with information and cultural messages everywhere either on TV or even the radio. It does not give us enough time to digest or decipher the meanings held in such objects/messages. Because it is too cumbersome to relate everything in terms of their shared significance – we might just and we do in fact take the generalized consensus on these meanings. While not an entirely wrong strategy, it does leave room to reflect if mass media makes overwhelms us so much that we become dupes and mere acceptors of its messages rather than critically thinking and extracting and even responding to these messages as we deem fit in our interpretations of them.
Lynette Loh
Thompson presents his article in a very organized and systematic manner, starting with the four conceptions of culture. He then went on to clarify how mass communication is different from communication. In his analysis of culture, he used a methodological framework– “depth hermeneutical methodology”.
Thompson and Habermas both wrote about how ideologies and messages are communicated in the public sphere through public communication (Habermas) or in Thompson’s terms, mass media. They both mention that ideologies have to be legitimized in order for political bodies to sustain domination.
Habermas stops here, whereas Thompson dives further into analyzing ideology. Thompson says that when analyzing ideologies, the role of interpretation is important. Meanings from messages in mass media can be interpreted differently by different individuals. Those who created the messages have also interpreted the messages in a certain way, which are then reinterpreted by the receivers. Multiple layers of interpretation could mean that the initial intention of the producer of the message could be lost somewhere in the middle. For example, the producers of these ads interpreted their message a certain way, while the public’s interpretation of them were completely different. http://business.time.com/2012/07/05/what-were-they-thinking-10-ads-that-sparked-controversy/
Sherilyn Tan
Thompson argued that it is essential that the study of mass communication be situated in the broader picture of cultural analysis.
Different aspects of mass communication have to be looked at from the production/diffusion to the construction/reception by audience.
He distinguished between mass communication (books, news, radio, tv etc) and face to face interactions.
Mass communication is mediated by media institutions. For instance, in mass communication, there is no physical audience, resulting in an instituted break between production and reception. Secondly, mass communication can be stored and hence has a sense of permanence and becomes part of history, while shaping the present. Thirdly, mass communicated messages are commodified and reproducible. E.g. Newspapers’ aim is to reach high circulation rates. Lastly, mass communicated messages are available to audience beyond time ad space.
Furthermore, media messages are often embedded with an underlying ideology (legitimation, dissimulation, fragmentation and reification), that seek to sustain relations of domination and reproduce the power of those who hold it. This is in line with Stuart Hall’s argument that the audience/decoders might interpret the message differently from what the media/encoder intended for (hegemonic code).
Media massages have to be reflexively situated in specific social-historical contexts. There are power and resource asymmetries wherein media and state institutions control access to information.
One’s individual attributes like class, gender, age, race also affect how one interpret and give meaning to the messages.
Next, Habermas talked about the public sphere which was once characterised by the bourgeoise needs that were transmitted to the state, via the “public body”.
The rise of mass media channels then, like the newspapers, were no longer simply for the dissemination of news and infomation. Rather, they became a medium for public discussion, while the press remained an institution of the public.
However due to economic and structural changes, the boundaries between the state and society, the public and private realms blurred, leading to a “refeudalization” of the public sphere.
Similar to what Thompson posited, messages are encoded with ideology, Habermas argued that media now attempts to manipulate and manufacture consensus, perhaps through press propaganda. Large non governmental organisations replace old public sphere institutions. The public sphere is weakened an public opinions takes a backseat as public communication is very controlled. This reminds me of how the MDA recently outlined new licensing requirements for online news site, to ensure these platforms are on par with traditional news agencies, in order to create a more consistent regulatory framework. This this may be an attempt to ensure that any news or critique about the state/government is well regulated and anything that goes against state ideologies is not published.
Evon
Thompson
His article revolves around the key argument that mass communication should be analysed as a cultural phenomenon and historically specific and socially structured forms and processes within which means of symbolic forms are produced, transmitted and produced should be studied. He argued that the most common way of analysing mass communication is that mass communication is seen as a medium of ideology which is used to sustain existing social relations which focused on the production or construction of media message. However, such approach is limited in its analysis as it overlooked the complex process involved in the production and reception of mass messages.
Hence, Thompson suggested studying mass communication through the analysis of culture and ideology. The analysis of culture via depth-hermeneutical methodology allows for the identifications of distinctive characteristics of media institutions and their transmitted media messages by reconstructing the social-historical context, explicating the structural features and relations and drawing in creative and constructive interpretations. This analysis of culture is adapted into analysis of ideology. When analysing the ideological character in the study of mass communications, the study of production and diffusion and construction of message is important as well as the reception of the media message. The former is usually emphasized however the latter is crucial as well as it will determine how the media message is received by the user.
Taking fertility as an example, though the Singapore government was successful in curbing fertility rates in the 1970s, the success rate of increasing fertility rates now is not as promising. Singaporeans are not adhering to the ideological message of having more babies now that are transmitted through propaganda messages in TV shows and fertility campaigns thereby undermining the relations of domination that the government has on procreation issues. Different social-historical context and receptions to the media message contained in mass communication could yield different results thereby showing the relevance of Thompson’s argument of studying mass communications as a cultural and ideological phenomenon.
Stanley Wong
White takes a historical approach to the impact of development of technology over time, and how people in different societies and eras have appropriated such technologies for their use. His concluding paragraph – that no technological creativity is unitary, and that technology is “the systematic modification of the physical environment for human ends”, implies that technological applications and innovations are contextual, and humans adopt and adapt them to suit their specific environment and needs. Indeed, through the various examples that were, it has been shown that sometimes certain technological innovations are often appropriated and used outside of their intended uses to suit the needs and culture of the particular society.
A similar argument is also presented by Thompson. He builds upon White’s argument not only extending it to technologies (of mass communication), but also to the construction, transmission, representation, and interpretation of the various dimensions of mass communication brought about by these technologies as well. For instance, in the vein of White’s argument, Thompson suggests that media messages are not absorbed in its entirety by its audiences, but is subject to their interpretation. The way individual audiences decode and recode these media messages are influenced by the social contexts in which they live out their lives, as well as their location within the social structure. Thompson then demonstrates ways in which media messages can be understood, by either locating it within a social-historical context or taking a semiotical(?) approach to interpret it. An element that Thompson brought in, that is not included in White’s article, is power in the form of ideology, where he argues that media messages and its technologies are means of preserving existing relations of power or to subordinate certain social group to others. Thompson further highlights the role of social institutions in the construction and transmission of ideology, where “particular agents or groups are endowed with power in systematically asymmetrical ways”.
The concept of ideology and the notion of social institutions endowing particular social actors with power are elaborated upon in Habermas’ article. Habermas is concerned with the public sphere and public opinion. For Habermas, the public sphere and opinion was originally intended to be a critique to the political government. Mass communication here then plays a key role here in medium for public debate, in the form of newspapers and journalism.
Habermas further argues that the influx of private interests transforms the way messages in mass communications are presented. The invasion of the private into the public also brings forth conflicts found within the private sphere into the public sphere as well, fragmenting it. Mass communications, instead of presenting political debate or public opinion to the masses, is also embedded with ideology, propaganda and commercial interests as well. In addition, it is used to serve the needs of private special interest groups that have vested interest in attaining power and legitimacy through popular public opinion as well. The most obvious example of Habermas’ article intersecting with Thompson’s can be located in the realm of politics, where mass media serves organisations to influence public opinion through (mis)representing and propaganda, or even advocating for causes. In these cases, those who are endowed with more resources and power are at a better position to manipulate public opinion or to subordinate their enemies. Perhaps to Habermas, the public sphere has been transformed by social processes to become a battleground where various organisations fight for domination through usage of mass media.
I posted my reply on 29th JAN. but it said that” your comment is awaiting moderation” which I don’t quite understand what dose it mean. And I can’t find it on respoonse board. So I post here again.
According to Habermas, the public sphere means a sphere which mediates between society and state, in which the public organizes itself as the bearer or public opinion, and it must accord with the principle of public sphere. In today’s society, it is not hard to find examples that public sphere plays an indispensable role as a mediator between society and state.
Not only does it provide opportunities for people to communicate and bond each other (like a bridge), but also great facilitate people’s lives. With the development of the social media technology, it is much convenient for people to share their ideas and feelings with others, and politic leaders could get good use of it to advocate or gain supports. What’s more, it also enables advertisers, business people, public relations workers to enhance corporate images and gain benefits.
When we talk about media, there not only have to be users, receptors, but also people who encode and decode the message so that we could gain the information effectively. And in large part majority, people don’t preview the public in particular manner that public emerge out of specific form of the media, according to Habermas, that is for him printed material like newspapers. And creating public sphere, it’s very much for him a kind of root of democracy he has in mind.
Thompson argues that the analysis of culture and mass communication should be regarded as central concerns of sociology and social theory, and he also puts forward a framework for the analysis of culture and shows how this framework can be applies to the study of mass communication. And I totally agree with the idea that the nature of culture experience in modern societies has been profoundly affected by the development of mass communication like books, newspapers and television. In my opinion, writing is the key step of all work, and it’s no doubt that languages make things easier. The essence of media is help people to gain and distribute knowledge and information
I relate very well with Thompson’s reading as he mentions that we have to consider not just the messages that we see as a final product. Especially when he mentioned about ideology, the power relations and relations of domination behind the corporations that display mass media often has hidden agendas and conveys different meanings. A few years ago, I was very shocked to find out that Disney owns ESPN as well as the ABC channel and bought over the ownership of Star Wars. This monopoly that they have would mean that there is definitely the same interest across all industries. Having different mediums to reach out to different audiences is something that the audience must reflect on. Therefore, although technology has made our lives better, the people behind the technologies may take advantage of the technologies.
Technology has also made our lives better by allowing for a greater public sphere through the internet and social media platforms however, it is true that it is not entirely ‘free’. There are still restrictions on this public sphere especially in Singapore. When Amy Cheong posted her racist comment on Malay weddings at the void deck, it was such a controversy that sparked headline news. The government had to intervene and comment on her action as well. Therefore, although the internet is a way to express yourself freely, it is still regulated to some extent as there are watchdogs around.
White made a point that the social-historical context must be taken into account of each invention. I feel that sometimes we take for granted the technologies that we have today. If he did not mention the example of the button, I would not have realised how great its importance is especially in a cold country. Although one must understand how an invention come about. Not all inventions can be explained, since he mentioned that some inventions have different uses in different parts of the world in the past when the world was not as global as today. In today’s context, the world is more homogenous as the technologies have made everyone more and more interconnected with each other. Therefore, cultures and traditions and ways of life are more diffused across the globe.
Thompson has definitely emphasized on cultural reflexivity, never to take the media messages at face value. This makes me more suspicious of many things though.
Being a student majoring in Marketing I thought it’d be interesting if I could make a link between the readings and what I’ve been taught in Business, each week.
What stood out to me this week was this notion of mass in Thompson’s readings and how it allows for this sense of ‘globality’ as discussed during our lecture. In the modern era, technology and mass communication has fueled this ability for us to have shared experiences and a collective memory, by enabling us to participate in issues ”beyond our immediate social milieu”. Thompson goes on to say that we need to pay more attention to “the complex processes involved in the production and reception of media messages”. Mass communication is seen as a medium that is also an ideological apparatus because it not only serves to spread the message but also leaves it open for interpretation.
What came to mind when this was discussed was that this is exactly why advertising is such an important and interesting tool in the modern era. Advertising is almost always attached to some form of media and mass communication and this existence of the ‘mass’ such as the ‘mass market’ allows advertisers to create advertisements with a specific message that can reach a greater audience. However, to go one step further, because media is a channel that also makes such advertisements open to interpretation this has further increased the importance of advertisements in determining the success of a product.
I was taken with Thompson’s comparison of Mass Communication and how it differs from face to face communication in different ways. The one that especially strikes me is ‘information storage mechanisms affect the nature of the message itself and endow it with a permanence… everyday interactions don’t have.’
I have never been one to post a status or anything for that matter on the Internet because I do not like the idea that there is something that I have said that cannot be erased. Yes, it maybe taken down but by then who knows how many people have taken a screenshot of it. Technology has moved in such a direction that although it has empowered many to speak up with the promise of anonymity, it has also silenced a few who feel that such a medium with its unforgiving nature, is not an appropriate medium to freely air their views and they would rather not participate.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/30/facebook-anonymous_n_4694577.html Facebook is in the process of allowing anonymity because “If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.” This in some ways solves the nature of the message being affected due to the storage of information but at what cost to our humanness? Now ‘real identity’ has become a burden and I recall last weeks Heidegger reading where now we have a standing reserve of virtual selves at our disposal.
The Habermasian notion of the “public sphere” does not hold any water to me, as it is idealistic and ignorant of how society is (unequally) stratified. Marx would argue that depending on one’s class location, one would conceive different material experiences, ideas etc hence starkly different material reality (rich vs poor, capitalist vs proletariat). So this “public sphere” has demarcated boundaries of who is let to belong and not belong in debate and creating discourse. So the last time I check, how is this democratic? And I can argue using Bourdieu’s term capital – economic, cultural, social – and the differential levels the rich, educated man vs the poor bloke have, where the former has amassed capital that is more recognized and valued than the latter. Bourdieu also has the concept of habitus and practice, which is easily applicable: say, if you live in a technologically advanced country where there are all kinds of gadgets everywhere, you are living in a habitus where you can freely practice using or adopting (McLuhan’s term) such technological objects. Then imagine being somewhere remote and rural. Technology won’t mean anything. This logic is in line with the key point that technology is therefore contextual.
Another thing, I was at first cynical about the formation of public sphere in the new media ie. the virtual sphere. But then again, some online mavericks will find subversive strategies to challenge the status quo, hence bringing the point that there are unconquerable limits to the public sphere. This is because that modern technology allows things (messages, channels etc) to be fluid and elusive to be contained and regulated.
I liked Thompson’s reading as it has the inclination towards symbolism and implicit messages that forms of media carry. The idea of encoding reminds me Roland Barthes’s Rhetoric of the Image of what connotes and denotes, and critical media literacy where media are studied as texts. I guess these strategies allows for self-knowledge and critical thinking, much that is being said and suggested in Heidegger’s and White’s. These are solutions to combat messages/media texts riddled with dominant ideologies. Then one can become disillusioned and gain consciousness.
While reading the 3 articles, I seriously had no idea why were those readings were assigned to us because they all seemed like they were talking about really random things and not related to each other. Especially the White’s article when he went on talking about inventions here and there.
But now, all these make sense because understanding technology is not only about what has been invented, not about how it will be useful. Instead, it is very important to take into account the historicity of the technology because everything indeed happens for a reason and also how we cannot only simply understand the uses of these technology.
Technology is social, I completely agree with how he debunks the Genius Hypothesis because just look at how many technology have now been used for functions that were not initially intended. Furthermore how in today’s society, we overlook so many minute details and creations and only emphasize on the really impressive technology and their uses. We can lament about how impressive our iphones are, lament about how impressive those applications are. But we tend to forget the historicity of the iphones or even the historicity of the earlier forms of communications – if we gave an iphone to a clan in a really remote place, they would probably not even know what it can do and probably use the iphone as paper weight (random)? So to understand a cultural object like this, we have to take into account several other factors like location, class, economy, even norms.
This can also be linked to Thompson’s idea of mass communication. Distribution, interpretation and redistribution of ideas, ideologies also have to consider the following above. We can not study something as a single entity anymore.
After reading Habermas’s article, I’ve learnt that his definition of ‘public sphere’ is that everyone is entitled to have access and use of information to affect someone’s personal opinion. When I think about ‘public sphere’ in a more simplistic manner, it will be freedom of formation of public opinion & this freedom will influence a person’s life and the larger society. Mass media tend to use public sphere in presenting multiple perspectives just to change public opinion. It is difficult to be immune from the biased views within the public sphere and furthermore, Internet made it so easy to get information in any manner. Internet as a complex whole, it has a history, it didn’t just came about over one night. It is involved in a process where people adapted to technologies to suit their current society form.
Technologies changes throughout history and now we can see how they progressed and still progressing in this modern era. Habermas mentioned that during the Enlightenment period in the 18th century, ideas of ‘public sphere’ and ‘public opinion’ started forming. From the earliest forms of technology (eg: printing press, newspapers…) spreading thinking in a more specified locale (like in Europe, etc) to the currently superb Internet, which allows mass communication across the world, without the worry of temporal and spatial differentials. Changes in technologies really empower people with knowledge at an ever amazing speed and quantity.
In my opinion, it is very difficult to categorize ‘private opinion’ and ‘public opinion’ and sometimes, these two may even overlap. Public sphere is so powerful nowadays that even private information appeared on it unknowingly, or unintentionally? It is very convenient for individuals to voice their own views to the public through online platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and this make people powerful in relation to the state. Private affairs flooding in the public sphere may not be good; it means people have to start contemplating whether it is a ‘private opinion’ or a ‘public opinion’ once they’ve received information online.
It is also important to note that although most people have access to Internet, there are still limitations with regards to the political sphere, which may restricts information available to the public. (Example: The Chinese government going head-strong against Google on issue of Censorship Source – http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703956604576110453371369740 ) This is evidence of situations where Governmental authorities will always lookout for their own interests.
My summary point of Lynn White’s article is that technological creativity is not unitary, it is multi-faceted. Another crucial point to note throughout the whole article is that, for technological innovation, its simple idea may evolve and expansion to a whole new concept and it is also an inevitable process. Usually the intent of the inventors will be skewed to the intent of users accordingly in the social-historical settings and they may differ. For example, a button is not just a button but it provides security and warmth for the children when their mothers buttoned them up in winter. It is not so much of a straightforward relation, but there must be some interpretations to it too.
This is also related to Thompson argument of distinctive characteristics of mass communication. There are different categories of differentiating mass communication through ‘classical’, ‘descriptive’, ‘symbolic’ and ‘structural’ ways. The ‘button’ example enables us to use these varying categories to explain its meaning and value. According to Thompson, ‘meaning and power intersects’. Thus, he thinks that ‘the study of ideology is to study the ways in which meaning serves to sustain relations of domination’, and this boils down to “power relations”.
I think what is interesting from the readings of this week is that although at first glance they seem to be completely redundant information, there is more than meets the eye. For example with White, I couldn’t get why she was rambling on and on about seemingly mundane things and exploring the histories of something as small as the button. Interestingly with closer inspection and greater understanding, we see how technology (be it as impressive as computers or perhaps as small as buttons) are interconnected and shouldn’t be seen as singular spectacular events. The innocuous button changes our way of life, from the way we make our clothing to the way we move. Like there shouldn’t be a sense of heroism and romanticism linked to that particular finding of technology. I can glean from White’s reading that every small progress leads to the bigger finding which people tend to overlook. Technology does not exist in a vacuum, there are socio-historical contexts that lead to the creation of certain types of technology.
As the result of Habermas ‘s article, the public sphere is an important part of social life which approaching all public opinion without the position in the society. Another side of the public sphere still has the state that mean the public sphere do not overlap, but designate that sphere is an public antiquity as understand as private opinion.
Continually Habermas gave some article of the public sphere in the social welfare state mass democracy, which control the mass of organized in form the social welfare state. It all kind of like public sphere is a product of media in the globalization and the private sphere is kind of something normally and depending on the democratic in the modern life.
Additionally, media is a part of people from the idea and ability of the modern state, but focusing on the rule of the democracy is depending on the government in nowadays and it is a big deals that media can be transfer all the information particularly in the history of society technology in the communication.
The functionally of media that it seem be most specific in the society is about the part of technology and history of human being. Hence, the technology in the society might be come from the understanding of human and also the innovation of the understanding in the culture identify in the largest communication.
According to Habermas, the public sphere means a sphere which mediates between society and state, in which the public organizes itself as the bearer or public opinion, and it must accord with the principle of public sphere. In today’s society, it is not hard to find examples that public sphere plays an indispensable role as a mediator between society and state.
Not only does it provide opportunities for people to communicate and bond each other (like a bridge), but it also great facilitates people’s lives. With the development of the social media technology, it is much convenient for people to voice their ideas and share their feelings with others, (like I-Media and other social media like Facebook and Weibo) and it leads to self-betterment. Although comments restriction still exists in some area, in this case, government get to realize that they are deluding people if they stop people from telling truth.
What’s more, public sphere also enables advertisers, business people, public relations workers to enhance corporate images and gain benefits. And politic leaders could also get good use of it to advocate or gain supports.
When we talk about media, there not only have to be users, receptors, but also people who encode and decode the message so that we could gain information effectively. And in large part majority, we don’t preview the public in particular manner that public emerge out of specific form of the media, according to Habermas, that is for him printed material like newspapers. And creating public sphere, it’s very much for him a kind of root of democracy he has in mind.
Thompson argues that the analysis of culture and mass communication should be regarded as central concerns of sociology and social theory, and he also puts forward a framework for the analysis of culture and shows how this framework can be applies to the study of mass communication. And I totally agree with the idea that the nature of culture experience in modern societies has been profoundly affected by the development of mass communication like books, newspapers and television. In my opinion, writing is the key step of all work, and it’s no doubt that languages make things easier. The essence of media is to help people to gain and distribute knowledge and information, and the purpose of mass media can only be achieved by mutual efforts: sending and receiving. Media wouldn’t mean anything if no one receive it.
Habermas talks about the public sphere, which is a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Access to the public sphere is available to all citizens. With the public spehere, communication has changed and it now requires specific means of transmitting information and influences those who receive it. The audience thus decode the message that is being communicated to them. The public sphere allows also for people to express their concerns and voice their opinions on issues that may concern them.
Habermas sheds light on the history of the public sphere and we see what was deemed public in the past was merely a public representation of power. This meant that those who had power represent their power “before” the people instead of for the people. The bourgeois public sphere then became the sphere of private individuals assembled into a public body, and they took control of the “intellectual newspapers” for use against the public authority itself. The newspaper thus played an important role later when they were often used by political parties with a political agenda. Hence the press found itself as the mediator and intensifier of public discussion, instead of just being a tool for the spreading of news.
In today’s society, we are also able to see how the public sphere is the mediator between the state and the society and the media institutions have a major part to play. We have seen how political leaders and parties (in Singapore and many parts of the world) make use of the different forms of media especially social media platforms such as facebook, to garner support from the masses. It is also not surprising to see how people are able to voice their personal opinions through such similar means as well.
White paints a paradoxical illustration on technology, using basic tools as examples to explain how humans interact with technology. She begins with talking about coins as forms of currency, illustrating how technology can be tools that aid human communication and that not equivalent to modernity. In fact, humans utilized technology way back, intrinsically linked to humans’ development of knowledge.
For example, a coin (currency) is a tool in which people assign shared meaning in order to communicate.
“If technology is defined as the systematic modification of the physical environment for human ends, it follows that a more exact understanding of technological innovation is essential to self-knowledge,” she also says.
To me, this means that if we truly understand technology, we understand ourselves and what we want. As discussed last week (Heidegger), the essence of technology is not in the science, but how we want to utilize it and alter our lives.
This essence of technology is illustrated in White’s argument about how people use “a charging stallion (to) deliver the blow”.
“Now the warrior could lay his lance at rest between his upper arm and body: the blow was delivered not by the arm but by the force of a charging stallion.”
This illustration is also an uncanny parallel of modern weaponry that creates a sense of detachment between perpetrators and their victims. As discussed in tutorial last week, drones, are types of aircrafts that can operate without a pilot. These aircrafts may carry bombs to be released on enemy territories.
The blow delivered not by the arm.
The bomb was not released by a man –
But, by the force of a drone.
This effectively shifts the blame to the ‘brutality’ of technology, from the fundamental human intention behind the weapon. It legitimizes violence by lessening the responsibility of the action.
Habermas offers insight to the public and private spheres, defining who constitutes the different spheres.
I would assume that an example of public spheres, which are defined as the “realm of our social life where public opinion is formed”, would include civil societies. Habermas cites newspapers to be a tool of forming public opinion.
There is plenty of discourse questioning whether there is truly a space for public opinions to form in Singapore. Does this mean that there is no public opinions in countries with tight regulation of expressions of alternative views from the state?
My answer, like Yuan Ting’s above, may be informal and frank at times, seeing as this is a blog entry 🙂
The Public Sphere: An Encyclopaedia Article
I find it interesting how the public and private spheres have been reversed since the 20th Century (moving of royalty and religious leaders to the private sphere, and increased movement of individual opinion to the public sphere, through the use of mass media.)
The article suggests that Democracy promotes more expression of public opinion – meaning one has more freedom to express his/her views publicly. The people had more say, via the newspapers and TV (during the author’s time) and they have even more say today, in the age of social media and citizen journalism. Perhaps it’d be interesting to explore the responsibility that comes with the expression of public opinion. In the past, religious and royal leaders had the final word, and their views represented everyone’s views. This could mean a more stifled past for the common folk. But perhaps they didn’t have to think about what they said, because whatever their opinions were would not have held water. Today, with simple Internet access, almost everyone in Democratic states can express their views freely in the public sphere. Emotions can run high with the influx of conflicting, contrasting opinions that bombard us daily. (I’m thinking about Anton Casey here.) True, more freedom of expression on more platforms is a great thing as it promotes freedom and Democratic ideals. However, could this ‘freedom’ get out of hand? Could this ‘freedom’ go unchecked? I’m thinking freedom of expression on the public sphere is great, but it has to come with a form of self-responsibility/self-regulation.
And the idea that business owners are in the private sphere and that Democratic governments are in the public sphere truly reflects how we live today. Big Business is private and concerned with profit-making while Big Brother is public and concerned with state welfare. But it is ironic that Big Business, being in the private sphere, actually controls much of our everyday lives? (How many corporations and conglomerates rule our world today? How much control do they exert over the products we consume?) Big Business is in the private sphere, but I think that it is directly involved in the lives of people all over the world (being involved the lives of millions of people isn’t exactly a private thing, methinks).
It is ironic how there are “Public Relations” departments in almost every agency (public or private). Governments (Big Brother) have them to regulate their press statements and media responses, private businesses have them to make sure that they portray a desirable/good image. Like the article suggests, the public sphere seems to be “arduously constructed case by case”. It is constructed, crafted and planned to look/sound a certain way. Where does that leave the public sphere being an arena of free voices? How are voices free if they are regulated? Is the public sphere, as suggested in the article, compromised to suit certain ‘tastes’ of the people? Are there greater forces that influence what the public sphere should be, even though it is supposed to be the voice of the people? (For example, political/economic agendas.)
Mass Communication and Modern Culture:
It is really refreshing to see mass communication as ideological. During my Poly days as a media student, I never thought of it this way. Of course, we knew about propaganda being used to spread direct messages, but I didn’t realise that mass communication can be the ideology itself. How the media is not necessarily just a means to an end and how the media is not just this awesome tool used to entertain people (radio, soap operas, etc).
The Television viewing example in the article really reminds me of an example brought up during HS2004 lecture, helmed by Prof Patrick Williams. He said that TV shows can actually be highlighting/promoting a certain type of culture. For instance, there could be more TV programmes featuring heterosexual relationships than TV programmes featuring homosexual relationships. Could this be sending an ideological message on the kind of relationships we ‘ought’ to be in?
Another way in which the mass media (mass comms) is the ideology is that of Singapore’s media monopoly. All of our mainstream/mass media groups (TV and Radio) are owned by Mediacorp or Singapore Press Holdings – and the government has a substantial stake in them. Many ideological messages are transmitted via Singapore’s mass media, such as the building up of families, working hard in school, going to serve National Service, and the emphasis on filial piety in programmes. The messages are embedded in programme storylines. (Eg: TV dramas featuring school children who work hard in school, respect their teachers, get good grades and get good jobs.) These messages point to Meritocracy, Singapore’s Low Birth Rate, Singapore’s lack of natural resources and perhaps, certain forms of Confucianism (respect for parents and elders).
John Thompson’s paper – “ Mass Communication And Modern Culture: Contribution To A Critical Theory Of Ideology” appealed to me the most out of the three readings. This is primarily because I find it ever so relatable to the way in which individuals ( myself, included) consume culture. Thompson reflects and critically analyzes how media messages are produced, constructed and absorbed by individuals. In relating this to a cultural perspective, the media messages could be seen as the cultural object of significance/shared value and interpreted using the cultural diamond model.
Firstly, a rather interesting point that Thompson raises is that “ cultural phenomena do not subsist in a vacuum”. By this he implies that cultural objects – both tangible ( Apple Laptops) and intangible ( Miley Cyrus’s twerking video) do not just stay put in the location or community in which they are produced but expand via mass media into temporal and special dimensions far beyond their immediate capacity. I find this in itself to be a phenomenon produced directly by mass media. This is due to the effect of immediacy with which such cultural phenomena are transmitted and to the wide variety of the audience ( virtually everyone and anyone who has access to technology) that it reaches out to. Although not explicit in its effects, I feel that such a transmission mechanism shrinks the world we live in both temporally and geographically. What happens in one country is always the other country’s headlining news. This is interesting because it shows that mass media diminishes boundaries of a local culture and spreads it to become one of global significance – whether adopted or not. While its origins can definitely be traced, its participants can come from almost anywhere in the world.
Furthermore, this allows individuals the autonomy ( in some instances) to choose what kind of cultural phenomena they wish to be engaged in. If the American way of life appeals to me and I wish to embody it – I choose the iPhone. If the European way of life appeals to me – I choose the Blackberry. Bearing in mind of course, that mass media propagates these cultural notions to its consumers and thus gives them the outlook into what cultural commodities offer them in their symbolic representations. This would not have been the case had it not been for mass media. This point too was noted by Thomson who rightfully compared older modes of transmission by saying “ Prior to the development of the popular press and broadcasting, most cultural forms and processes were produced and reproduced through oral language and face-to-face interaction.” Such forms of transmission do not have the pictorial effects or marketing slogans that advertising in new media grants to consumers in modern times.
Next, Thompson also claims that culture can be deemed as an “ ideological apparatus” to be propagated through the means of mass media. What this essentially suggests is a top-down approach where those in power can selectively choose what to propagate and what to censor, to their own advantage. Such a form of domination is relevant to Marx’s theory of conflict where the dominant class imposes their beliefs on the less dominant class and creates a sense of false consciousness. Applying this to mass culture in this respect, for instance, the government such as the Singapore government only allows certain forms of media to be propagated openly to the general public. Censorship is heavily exercised and thus this runs the risk of whether the culture portrayed in such a top-down approach is falsified to some extent. While there isn’t and should not be a dimension of truth or false in cultural objects ( since they are open to interpretation) it is interesting to wonder how such an approach shapes the cultural mindsets of people rather than exposing them wholesomely to culture as it is produced. Therefore, I feel that in this instance there could be a sense of competing ideologies between the culture that is produced via mass media and the culture that is being allowed to be transmitted via mass media to society.
Another interesting point that Thomson raises is the commodification of culture via mass media. This is particularly accurate in terms how the messages in mass media communication are construed by the audience. To understand this though, we have to reflect upon how these mass media messages are produced. Thompson posits that one of the most distinctive forms of such production mechanisms is marked by interdeterminacy. This is with respect to the fact that the messages must be produced and transmitted or diffused in the absence of direct and continuous monitoring of audience response. This involves a variety of strategies such as audience monitoring devices. While this is undeniably effective, I feel that is a rather robotic and engineered form of cultural production. It’s almost as if the same formula is being used over and over again and there is simply no means of adding some form of creativity – for fear that it might not work with the audience. This might create a message that is overly repeated and people might start believing that what they watch on TV is the norm and there is nothing much to think about it because it would not change as frequently.
Although Thomson, does make some attempts at mentioning that consumers of mass media are not undiscerning sponges and actively participate in deciphering the meanings that cultural objects displayed to them have, I feel that this is easier said than done. This is primarily because, we are flooded with information and cultural messages everywhere either on TV or even the radio. It does not give us enough time to digest or decipher the meanings held in such objects/messages. Because it is too cumbersome to relate everything in terms of their shared significance – we might just and we do in fact take the generalized consensus on these meanings. While not an entirely wrong strategy, it does leave room to reflect if mass media makes overwhelms us so much that we become dupes and mere acceptors of its messages rather than critically thinking and extracting and even responding to these messages as we deem fit in our interpretations of them.
Thompson presents his article in a very organized and systematic manner, starting with the four conceptions of culture. He then went on to clarify how mass communication is different from communication. In his analysis of culture, he used a methodological framework– “depth hermeneutical methodology”.
Thompson and Habermas both wrote about how ideologies and messages are communicated in the public sphere through public communication (Habermas) or in Thompson’s terms, mass media. They both mention that ideologies have to be legitimized in order for political bodies to sustain domination.
Habermas stops here, whereas Thompson dives further into analyzing ideology. Thompson says that when analyzing ideologies, the role of interpretation is important. Meanings from messages in mass media can be interpreted differently by different individuals. Those who created the messages have also interpreted the messages in a certain way, which are then reinterpreted by the receivers. Multiple layers of interpretation could mean that the initial intention of the producer of the message could be lost somewhere in the middle. For example, the producers of these ads interpreted their message a certain way, while the public’s interpretation of them were completely different.
http://business.time.com/2012/07/05/what-were-they-thinking-10-ads-that-sparked-controversy/
Thompson argued that it is essential that the study of mass communication be situated in the broader picture of cultural analysis.
Different aspects of mass communication have to be looked at from the production/diffusion to the construction/reception by audience.
He distinguished between mass communication (books, news, radio, tv etc) and face to face interactions.
Mass communication is mediated by media institutions. For instance, in mass communication, there is no physical audience, resulting in an instituted break between production and reception. Secondly, mass communication can be stored and hence has a sense of permanence and becomes part of history, while shaping the present. Thirdly, mass communicated messages are commodified and reproducible. E.g. Newspapers’ aim is to reach high circulation rates. Lastly, mass communicated messages are available to audience beyond time ad space.
Furthermore, media messages are often embedded with an underlying ideology (legitimation, dissimulation, fragmentation and reification), that seek to sustain relations of domination and reproduce the power of those who hold it. This is in line with Stuart Hall’s argument that the audience/decoders might interpret the message differently from what the media/encoder intended for (hegemonic code).
Media massages have to be reflexively situated in specific social-historical contexts. There are power and resource asymmetries wherein media and state institutions control access to information.
One’s individual attributes like class, gender, age, race also affect how one interpret and give meaning to the messages.
Next, Habermas talked about the public sphere which was once characterised by the bourgeoise needs that were transmitted to the state, via the “public body”.
The rise of mass media channels then, like the newspapers, were no longer simply for the dissemination of news and infomation. Rather, they became a medium for public discussion, while the press remained an institution of the public.
However due to economic and structural changes, the boundaries between the state and society, the public and private realms blurred, leading to a “refeudalization” of the public sphere.
Similar to what Thompson posited, messages are encoded with ideology, Habermas argued that media now attempts to manipulate and manufacture consensus, perhaps through press propaganda. Large non governmental organisations replace old public sphere institutions. The public sphere is weakened an public opinions takes a backseat as public communication is very controlled. This reminds me of how the MDA recently outlined new licensing requirements for online news site, to ensure these platforms are on par with traditional news agencies, in order to create a more consistent regulatory framework. This this may be an attempt to ensure that any news or critique about the state/government is well regulated and anything that goes against state ideologies is not published.
Thompson
His article revolves around the key argument that mass communication should be analysed as a cultural phenomenon and historically specific and socially structured forms and processes within which means of symbolic forms are produced, transmitted and produced should be studied. He argued that the most common way of analysing mass communication is that mass communication is seen as a medium of ideology which is used to sustain existing social relations which focused on the production or construction of media message. However, such approach is limited in its analysis as it overlooked the complex process involved in the production and reception of mass messages.
Hence, Thompson suggested studying mass communication through the analysis of culture and ideology. The analysis of culture via depth-hermeneutical methodology allows for the identifications of distinctive characteristics of media institutions and their transmitted media messages by reconstructing the social-historical context, explicating the structural features and relations and drawing in creative and constructive interpretations. This analysis of culture is adapted into analysis of ideology. When analysing the ideological character in the study of mass communications, the study of production and diffusion and construction of message is important as well as the reception of the media message. The former is usually emphasized however the latter is crucial as well as it will determine how the media message is received by the user.
Taking fertility as an example, though the Singapore government was successful in curbing fertility rates in the 1970s, the success rate of increasing fertility rates now is not as promising. Singaporeans are not adhering to the ideological message of having more babies now that are transmitted through propaganda messages in TV shows and fertility campaigns thereby undermining the relations of domination that the government has on procreation issues. Different social-historical context and receptions to the media message contained in mass communication could yield different results thereby showing the relevance of Thompson’s argument of studying mass communications as a cultural and ideological phenomenon.
White takes a historical approach to the impact of development of technology over time, and how people in different societies and eras have appropriated such technologies for their use. His concluding paragraph – that no technological creativity is unitary, and that technology is “the systematic modification of the physical environment for human ends”, implies that technological applications and innovations are contextual, and humans adopt and adapt them to suit their specific environment and needs. Indeed, through the various examples that were, it has been shown that sometimes certain technological innovations are often appropriated and used outside of their intended uses to suit the needs and culture of the particular society.
A similar argument is also presented by Thompson. He builds upon White’s argument not only extending it to technologies (of mass communication), but also to the construction, transmission, representation, and interpretation of the various dimensions of mass communication brought about by these technologies as well. For instance, in the vein of White’s argument, Thompson suggests that media messages are not absorbed in its entirety by its audiences, but is subject to their interpretation. The way individual audiences decode and recode these media messages are influenced by the social contexts in which they live out their lives, as well as their location within the social structure. Thompson then demonstrates ways in which media messages can be understood, by either locating it within a social-historical context or taking a semiotical(?) approach to interpret it. An element that Thompson brought in, that is not included in White’s article, is power in the form of ideology, where he argues that media messages and its technologies are means of preserving existing relations of power or to subordinate certain social group to others. Thompson further highlights the role of social institutions in the construction and transmission of ideology, where “particular agents or groups are endowed with power in systematically asymmetrical ways”.
The concept of ideology and the notion of social institutions endowing particular social actors with power are elaborated upon in Habermas’ article. Habermas is concerned with the public sphere and public opinion. For Habermas, the public sphere and opinion was originally intended to be a critique to the political government. Mass communication here then plays a key role here in medium for public debate, in the form of newspapers and journalism.
Habermas further argues that the influx of private interests transforms the way messages in mass communications are presented. The invasion of the private into the public also brings forth conflicts found within the private sphere into the public sphere as well, fragmenting it. Mass communications, instead of presenting political debate or public opinion to the masses, is also embedded with ideology, propaganda and commercial interests as well. In addition, it is used to serve the needs of private special interest groups that have vested interest in attaining power and legitimacy through popular public opinion as well. The most obvious example of Habermas’ article intersecting with Thompson’s can be located in the realm of politics, where mass media serves organisations to influence public opinion through (mis)representing and propaganda, or even advocating for causes. In these cases, those who are endowed with more resources and power are at a better position to manipulate public opinion or to subordinate their enemies. Perhaps to Habermas, the public sphere has been transformed by social processes to become a battleground where various organisations fight for domination through usage of mass media.