Mass Media and Modern Culture
232 Najd
Mass Media and Modern Culture
Based on: http://www.litnotes.co.uk/mass_media.htm
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• We all inhabit particular
situations and things
like our surroundings,
family, friends, school,
work, neighborhood
and so on that shape
our individual identities.
In media-speak we refer
to this aspect of our
cultural identity as our
situated culture.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• In other words, situated culture refers to the
small-scale communication and interaction we
have on a day-to-day basis with the people
around us who we live in the same place as
we do. This kind of culture is primarily an oral
one - it is passed on and formed largely by
intimate word-of-mouth communication.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• At the same time, we are
to a large extent
dependent on regular
contact with the mass
media for information,
entertainment, ideas,
opinion and many other
things all of which are
connected to our
attempts to 'make sense'
of who and what we are.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• Our cultural experiences are affected by the
development of systems of mass
communication. A look at current research
shows that we spend from 18 to 35 hours per
week watching TV, for example. It is 'normal'
to spend 3 - 4 hours per day in the company of
a TV set. A large amount of our time is spent
on a range of media related activities.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• Since the mid-19th
century, we have come to
live not only in a situated
culture, but also in a
culture of mediation.
• The press, film and
cinema, television and
radio and more recently,
the Internet now supply a
larger-scale means of
public communication
compared to the past.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• Now our situated culture
exists within a much
wider mediated world.
• The introduction of the
term 'global village' in the
1960's illustrates how
much our world has
changed and the change
is due almost entirely to
the development of mass
communication.
Mass Media and Modern Culture:
What is Communication?
• Think of communication as
the transmission (sending)
and reception (receiving) of
'messages' on a very large
scale.
• Most communication is
done on a direct face-toface basis in a situated
cultural context, and it is a
two-way process. The
received message can be
responded to instantly.
There is 'feedback'.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
So what do we mean by 'mass
communication‘?
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• With mass communication, there
are four main distinctive features
as follows:
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• 1. Massmediated
culture tends
to be a oneway process.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• There is a gap or an institutional break
between the 'sender' of the message and the
'receiver'. The makers of the media texts, the
'senders' of the messages, do not have an
obvious feedback relationship with the
audience (Shouting at the TV screen does not
count as feedback!)
• Audience responses are rarely 'heard'.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• Producers have to target imaginary,
generalized or stereotypical audiences. They
can (and do) 'shape' products accordingly.
• They also make assumptions about audiences
that are based on conceptual ideas of what
people are (or should be) like, rather than how
they really are.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• Look at any
glamour magazine
and you can see
what the makers
of the texts think
men and women
should look like,
for example.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• 2. Specialized
technologies,
especially the
Internet, have begun
to affect the oneway system of
communication
described above.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• In addition, these
technologies have made
it possible to 'capture'
messages in a very
physical form
(photographs, film, taperecordings) which in turn
has led to historical
permanence or records.
Our sense of 'history' is
thus affected (and some
would say, constructed.)
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• 3. Media
messages can be
extended
'outwards', so that
events taking
place regionally or
locally now have
global coverage.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• Audiences are frequently calculated in billions!
This has major significance in terms of media
institutions. Lots of profit is made from selling
*syndicated rights to the whole world's media!
*In broadcasting, syndication is the licensing of the right to
broadcast television and radio programs by
multiple television and radio stations, without going through
a broadcast network (an organization that provides programs for
broadcast over a groups of radio stations or television stations) .
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• 4. Media messages have therefore become a
modern commodity - an industry - a product.
• Market forces thus have a definite impact on
the production and distribution of media
texts.
Media texts: Any media product (e.g. cartoon, fairy tale,
police drama, etc.)
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• It is argued that the
media now occupies a
central role in defining
and interpreting the
very nature of the world
according to certain
values, cultural
principles and
ideologies.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• Media messages contain ideological and
value messages. All media products are
advertising, in some sense proclaiming, values
and ways of life. The mainstream media
conveys, explicitly or implicitly, ideological
messages about such issues as the nature of
the good life and the virtue of consumerism.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• Mass culture tends to reproduce the
liberal value of individualism and to
foster a view of the citizen as
consumer.
http://www.sociologyindex.com/mass_culture.htm
Individualism
• The promise of popular culture is individual
happiness, which also is the focus of
American society — e.g. "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness." It is thus not a surprise
that popular culture material which
celebrates individualism and happiness
originates in the U.S.
https://www15.uta.fi/FAST/US7/NOTES/what-pc.html
Individualism
Individualism
Consumerism
• Consumerism is one of the strongest forces
affecting our lives in the modern world. The
term ‘consumerism’ does not simply refer to
immediate factors in our daily lives such as the
omnipresence of advertising, but anything
connected to the overarching idea in our
modern society that in order to be happier,
better and more successful people we have to
have more stuff.
Consumerism: Advertising
• Every day, each of us is bombarded
with around 1,600 commercial
messages. This sounds like a
massive number, but when you think
about a typical day in your life it is
quite possible.
Consumerism: Advertising
• A typical day might feature the following
activities – get up, read the paper (featuring
advertisements), listen to the radio
(advertisements), catch the bus to work
(advertisements on the bus and at the roadside),
arrive at work (advertisements on the internet),
go home (same advertisements as on the
incoming journey), watch TV (advertisements)
and go to bed. Needless to say, this is exposure to
a lot of advertisements!
Consumerism – beyond advertising
• Newspapers and magazines do not just
contain pages of advertisements but also
stories about new gadgets, new clothes,
property, makeovers, travel and many other
things, all suggesting that having them will
make life more fun and interesting, bring you
greater freedom or bring some other positive
change to your life.
Consumerism – beyond advertising
• They may not promote an item directly like an
advertisement but many will help to create
desires and needs in the reader – some
relating to specific products like cars or clothes
and others relating to particular ways of life
that require further money and consumption.
Consumerism – beyond advertising
• Our modern obsession with celebrities also
means that newspapers and magazines
publish stories about glamorous people we
might aspire to copy, and much of this
aspiration is to consume the same things as
they do – from designer clothes to private
jets.
http://www.lifesquared.org.uk/content/problem-consumerism
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• Ideology - a set of ideas or a view of the world
that is selective and gives a particular version
of reality -sometimes seen as deliberately
constructed by powerful groups in order to
maintain power and control.
• There are three major areas of concern, as
follows:
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• 1. Mass media has
a political and a
persuasive power
over us.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• Radio, TV, the press and
film can manipulate
whole societies.
Political propaganda,
advertising and the socalled 'mind-bending'
power of the media are
long-standing causes of
debate and concern.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• 2. Since the 19th
century there has been
a mistrust of so-called
'popular culture', which
is thought to debase or
degrade cultural
traditions and
standards.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• 3. The most contentious
issue concerns the effects
of the mass media on
social behavior, in
particular violence and
delinquency. The media
has regularly been
accused of 'causing'
outbreaks of unrest in
society.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• How does culture relate to mass
communication?
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• Culture can be defined as the beliefs, values,
or other frameworks of reference by which we
make sense of our experiences. It also
concerns how we communicate these values
and ideas.
• Mass media is centrally involved in the
production of modern/mass/popular culture.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
What is popular culture?
• Historically (until the 19th century, at any rate)
the term 'popular' was quite a negative thing,
with overtones of vulgarity and triviality something not 'nice' or 'respectable'.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• In the modern world, the term means
widespread, liked or at least encountered by
many people. It has also come to mean 'massproduced', i.e. made for the 'mass' of people.
There is a downside to this, of course, in that
it can also be interpreted as 'commercial' or
'trashy'.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• This leads into a further consideration,
which is the definition of 'popular
culture' as 'low' culture, something not
for the elite, but for the 'common'
people.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• Cultural value ('high' culture) has been
traditionally associated with dominant or
powerful groups - those who have
appreciation of classical music, art, ballet,
opera and so on. 'Low' or popular culture is
everything not approved of as 'high'. It is
vulgar, common, or 'easy'.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• Another definition of 'popular' is literally 'of
the people', a kind of 'folk' culture and this is
an interesting area, because it encompasses
the idea of an 'alternative' culture which
includes minority groups, perhaps with subversive values. The 'indie' music scene is an
example of this. So 'popular' culture can and
sometimes does, challenge the 'dominant'
cultural power groups.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
What is postmodern culture?
• It is argued that modern culture has
entered a so-called 'post-modern' phase.
Put simply there are four areas of
definition here:
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• 1. Because popular
culture and media
images dominate the
age, they dominate our
sense of reality. The
world is now
'intertextual' (images,
copies, simulations and
so on are so global that
there are no authentic
originals any more).
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• The result is that popular culture has
replaced art and 'high' culture and
the contrived and the simulated has
replaced the reality of experience
and history.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• 2. Postmodernism is about style.
Pastiche, collage, bricolage are
emphasized at the expense of content or
substance.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• A pastiche is a work
of visual art,
literature, theatre, or
music
that imitates the
style or character of
the work of one or
more other artists.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• A collage is a piece
of art made by
sticking various
different materials
such as photographs
and pieces of paper
or fabric on to a
backing.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• Bricolage (the mixing
and re-using of
images, signs and
symbols in art or
literature)
construction or
creation from a
diverse range of
available things.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• 3. Time, space history
and place have become
less secure - more
confused. The forces of
global communications
and networks are
eroding national
cultures. This causes
tension and uncertainty.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• 4. Postmodernism is
skeptical about absolute
truths, artistic,
scientific, historical or
political, so a secure
sense of time and place
is becoming more
difficult to sustain. Once
secure theories are now
open to question and
doubt.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
Conclusion
• The media has influenced the development of
modern life in three main ways:
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• 1. It represents the emergence of large-scale
systems of public communication:
Newspapers & print media from the 1850s
Photography from the 1880s
Cinema in the 1900s
Radio in the 1920s
Television in the 1950s
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• 2. The development of the media has had an
important influence on private life, the
'withdrawal into inner space' with TV and
radio. Leisure activities have been
concentrated in the home, although ironically
still connected to the outside 'global village'.
Mass Media and Modern Culture
• 3. The media and mass
communication have interacted and
mixed with pre-existing cultures,
forms and values, especially in the
development of 'popular culture'.
Based on: http://www.litnotes.co.uk/mass_media.htm