Matakuliah
Tahun
: Sosiologi Komunikasi Massa
: 2009/2010
MEDIA & PERUBAHAN SOSIAL
Pertemuan 3
• Consider the historical development of the contemporary media
• Examine the inter-relationships between media technologies and processes of
social change
• Introduce contrasting theoretical accounts of this relationship
• ‘Medium is the message’ or media as cultural technology
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Why study the media?
•
The media has a constitutive role in modern
societies.
•
‘the use of communication media involves
the creation of new forms of action and
interaction, new kinds of social relationship
and new ways of relating to others and
oneself’
(John B. Thompson: The Media and
Modernity)
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Defining the media
media (noun, pl. medium); meedja
C16th – a middle course, a compromise, moderation
C17th – ‘any intervening substance through which impressions are conveyed to the senses’
C18th – ‘a means of circulation or exchange’
C20th – ‘the medium is the message’ (Mcluhan)
Present - the institutions, practices and products of electronic broadcasting, printed magazines and
newspapers which address mass audiences
Future - ?
From New Keywords: A revised vocabulary of culture and society, Bennett et. al 2005.
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Media & Social Change
Does media influence society?
Does society influence the media?
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A Typical Japanese teenager?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Kawaii
Ganguro
Fruits
Otaku
Others – e.g., kogal
Fringe? Fad? or Foretaste of the future?
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FRUITS – the street fashion image featuring outrageous
combinations of color and form which challenges all
traditional concepts of coordination, symmetry, and style
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FRUITS!
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FRUITS
A street fashion fad?
Nothing more than the product of
a shrewd
marketing strategy?
Youth’s expression rebellion
against tradition?
A symptom of broader changes in
identity?
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ELEMENTS OF SIMILARITY AND/OR
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN JAPANESE
AND AMERICAN TEENAGERS’ IDENTITY
AS REFLECTED IN MEDIA IMAGES
 Television commercials
 Movies
 Print ads
DIRECTION OF INFLUENCE
Western influence – American images in Japanese media
Eastern influence – Kawaii, Fruits, and Otaku in the U.S.
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How much media exposure does the Japanese audience have?
Japan Media Review Statistics, June 24, 2004:
126.9M people, 100M TV sets, 120.5M radios, 73M mobile phones, 99%
literacy rate
86% read a newspaper daily, down from 91% fifteen years ago
Japan’s 49M households bought about 47M newspaper subscriptions in 2003
The Japanese spend about 21 minutes/day on average reading the newspaper
Only 29% of the Japanese believe that “mass media generally reports the truth”
40% of the Japanese watch TV more than 4 hours/day
 Some 20% of the Japanese feel “uneasy without the TV on”
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MEDIA PRESENCE (degree of pervasiveness, ease of
access,
type of media, etc.)
 validates and reifies group identity
 variations in types of access, cross-over to
other communication channels (e.g., from
print to television, to interpersonal
interactions
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Approaches to the media
Image/Text
Institution/
Producer/
Industry
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Audience/Consumer/
Fan/Viewer
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Image/Text
• Media re-presents the social world
• Representation is a process or
expression of power, of myth-making
(Barthes).
• Media messages need ‘de-coding’,
‘deconstructing’
• But, who decodes, and why should
we believe them?
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Institution/Producer/Industry
• Who owns/controls the media, and
what is their influence on media
products?
• Media industries, conglomeration,
control and ‘the means of mental
production’ (Marx)
• Media ownership, bias and ‘the
public sphere’
• Do you believe all you’re told? Who
does?
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Audience/consumer/viewer/fan
• Passive receptors?
• Use and negotiate with texts as part of daily life
• Active creators?
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Traditions in media/cultural studies
‘Political Economy’
The Frankfurt School
Mass Media and Mass society
Media as Propaganda/culture as ideology
‘Communication’
‘Cultural Studies’
Political Communication/Social Psychology
Effects
Uses and Gratifications
Texts and audiences
Marxism, feminism
Media use and everyday life
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A Sociological approach
Theory
History
Marx, Weber, Durkheim
New traditions of media theory
From Gutenberg to the Internet
Evidence
Textual analysis
Audience studies
Industry analysis
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The Media: A Historical Journey?
Printing
• 1440- Gutenberg Printing
Press
• 1550-1650 News
periodicals grow in
popularity in Europe –
‘the public sphere’
(Habermas)
• 1800s Invention of the
rotary press, abolition of
taxes on newspapers
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Telecommunication
•
•
•
•
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1753-1837 development of telegraphy
1858 – transatlantic cable laid
1870s – beginning of the telephone network
1979 – first commercial mobile phone network
‘revolutionised business practice, gave
rise to new forms of crime, and
inundated its users with a deluge of
information. Romance blossomed over
the wires. Secret codes were devised
by some and cracked by others. The
benefits were relentlessly hyped by the
advocates an dismissed by the sceptics,
whilst governments and regulators tried
and failed to control the new medium’
Standage, T, The Victorian Internet
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The Moving Image
•
•
•
•
•
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17th century – ‘magic lantern’
1826 – ‘wheel of life’ motion pictures
1895 Arrival of a Train at a Station
1920-1930 Invention of television
1952 – Queen’s coronation
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Technical Media (from Thompson 1991)
Fixation
Information storage and retrieval
Reproduction
Space/Time Distance
Commodification
Benjamin
Anderson, Mcluhan
Skills,
Knowledge, Abilities
Encoding/Decoding
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Theoretical Perspective: Marshall McLuhan
•
•
•
•
Canadian academic
‘Gutenberg Galaxy, The Medium is the Massage’
Media and sensory perception
Media and time/space
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Hot media
• ‘Hot media do not leave so much to
be filled in or completed by the
audience’ (1994: 23)
• ‘Print is the technology of
individualism’ (McLuhan 1962: 158)
• Books, films are hot
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Cool Media
• ‘Speech is a cool medium of low
definition, because so little is given
and so much has to be filled in by the
listener
• Phones, TV, the internet are ‘cool’’
• TV ‘depth participation’
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Mcluhan
Oral culture – The village
Print cultures – The nation; ‘hot’
Media cultures (TV & Radio) – ‘the global village’; ‘cool’
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Theoretical Perspectives Raymond Williams
• Welsh Marxist
• Key figure in British social theory –
particularly Cultural Studies tradition
• Long Revolution, Culture and Society,
Television: Technology and Cultural
Form
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Cause or effect?
Technological Determinism
Television was invented as a result of scientific and technical
research….
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Its power as a medium of news and entertainment
was then so great it altered all preceding media
Its power as a medium of social communication was
then so great it altered many of our institutions and
forms of social relationships
Its inherent properties altered our basic perceptions
of reality
It, along with other newly invented technologies,
altered the scale and form of our societies
It had unforeseen consequences on some of the
central processes of family, cultural and social life
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Symptomatic Technology
Television, discovered as a possibility by scientific and technical
research…
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Was selected for investment and development to meet the
needs of a new kind of society in the provision of centralised
entertainment, formation of opinion and styles of behaviour
Was selected for investment and promotion as a new and
profitable phase of a domestic consumer economy
Television became available as a result of scientific and
technical research and its character and uses….
Exploited and emphasised elements of passivity, which
television organised and came to represent
Served and exploited the needs of a new kind of large-scale
and complex but atomised society.
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Cultural technology
State, or military concerns
New Technologies,
New Cultural Forms
Commercial imperatives
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Technical innovation and invention
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Conclusions: Summarising the approach in Media Sociology
• Recognition of the central, constitutive, role of the media in contemporary
societies
• The media is not a monolith
• Texts, institutions and audiences
• Traditions of research (political economy, communication, cultural studies
• A sociological approach: history, theory, evidence
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Conclusions
• Media history – and particularly the history of the media industries - is significant
for understanding the contemporary experience of the media
• Distance, reproducibility, fixation, skills
• Form (medium) is as important as content (message) (Mcluhan)
• Suspicion of ‘technological determinism’ Williams
• Complexities of change, recognition of continuities
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