HUMN3075 - East Asia Media

Culture in the Global Age

Instructor: Izzy So
Lecture 3: Major theoretical approaches in
popular culture studies (II)
Agenda
• Political Economy
• Culture Industry (the Frankfurt School)
• New Media Approach
Political Economy
• Political economy from Marxist
viewpoint
• Concerns how markets and the general
economy are structured and
configured, why they have those
particular forms, and what sources of
power shaped them as they are
Political Economy

• there are no markets without

politics
• social relations, particularly the
power relations, that mutually
constitute the production,
distribution, and consumption of
resources
• Geopolitical dynamic
Political economy
• This approach pays little attention
to the social and cultural messages
the text reflects
• production processes, the
production and distribution system
• participating companies, networks,
and agents
• Strategies, responses to
macroeconomic conditions that
cause fluctuations in consumption
of cultural commodities
Political economy

• state policy continues to shape

the work of cultural industries
well into the age of globalization
(Christopherson and van
Jaarsveld 2005)
• State regulation can come in
various forms, including
restrictions, sanctions, initiatives,
and subsidies
 • restrict, regulate, or support the production
or marketing of popular culture.
Political economy • stimulate or stifle the production and
circulation of cultural commodities
Cultural market

• “power struggles are fought out at the

level of signification…” (Eagleton 1994,
p. 196).
• Creation of cultural myth
• plot, characters, narrative, ontology,
and so on reflect certain
contemporaneous signifiers and
elements
• a work of popular culture must draw
on familiar tropes that allow the
viewer or reader to contextualize and
comprehend the work
• Desires, beliefs, norms, and values into
which we have been socialized
Cultural market
• operate with the consensus
of participants who believe
they are acting in their own
best interests
• These “mentalities”
constitute by ‘hegemony’
• those able to shape the
rules defining interaction
and exchange in social
institutions may be able to
do so to their own benefit
and at others’ cost
Culture industry
• mass production and
commercialisation of cultural
production under capitalism
(Kellner 2004, p. 202).
• Max Horkheimer and Theodor W.
Adorno in 1930s
• drew from classical Marxist theory
regarding ownership over the
means of production
• mass media distribution played a
significant role in the creation of
mass audiences, and that the
mass production of content could
be used to reinforce the
ideologies of the ruling class
Culture Industry
• critique the mass production of
media products which threatened to
remove the distinction between high
and low art
• commercialization of artisanship
• art is devalued by being repackaged
into a mass-consumption commodity,
it loses its tradition, spirituality, and
other “high” moral assets (Adorno
1991; Adorno and Horkheimer 1973)
 Culture Industry

• “will of those in control”,

automating “self-reproduction of
the status quo” through the
reproduction of standardised
cultural products (2010, 184).
• removing individuality and
replacing it with a standardised
product, leading to a monopoly
of culture
• monopolising of the masses
through the creation of identical
products from which they cannot
escape
• false perception of individuality:
the imagined “individuality itself
serves to reinforce ideology”
(101).
Culture industry
• hierarchical model of distribution
• that positions the masses as subjects controlled from
above
• this results in the subjugation of the masses through the
reproduction of dominant ideologies presented in such
texts.
• oppressive power of popular culture (help by mass media)
over the masses
• dominant social structures are thus able to maintain their
power and reproduce the positions they hold (193).
Popular culture studies

• mass culture perspective

• hopelessly commercial culture
• The texts and practices of popular
culture are seen as formulaic and
manipulative
• forms of public fantasy, a collective
dream world
Popular culture
studies
• According to Adorno, the mass
society is rendered powerless by
the culture industry
• Its audience is a mass of non-
discriminating consumers.
• brain-numbed and brain-numbing
passivity
• articulate, in a disguised form,
collective (but repressed) wishes
and desires (psychoanalysis)
• Audience studies
New media approach
• Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980)
• All media are at one level “a play of signs”
• Communicate messages (meanings) from one end to
another
• As a means of communication, each medium, independent
of the content it mediates, has its own intrinsic effects
which are its unique message
New media approach
• Message as separate from the medium itself;
• The medium delivers the message; But Marshall McLuhan
claimed they “The medium is the message”
• The idea is that mediums have a far greater impact on the
fundamental shape and nature of society than any message
that is delivered through that medium
New media approach

• the medium, or process, of our time,

electric technology is reshaping,
restructuring patterns of social
interdependence and every aspect
of our personal life
• For example, radio and television
reshaped the way we structure our
time and how we physically build
and arrange our houses
 New media approach
• “…the railway did not produce
movement or transportation or
wheel or road into human society,
but it accelerated and enlarged
the scale of previous human
functions, creating totally new
kinds of cities and new kinds of
work and leisure.” (1)
• The message of any medium or
technology is the change of scale
or pace or pattern that it
introduces into human affair
• It is the medium that shapes and
control the scale and form of
human association and action (9)
 • not to discount the power of content and ideas,
• but McLuhan argues: “It is only too typical that the content of
any medium blinds us to the character of the
New media medium.” (Understanding Media, P.9)
approach • an argument of capacity, mediums extending our capability
• Medium as the extension of human [capability]
• what makes social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, YouTube,
Instagram) powerful is not its content, but its capacity to
deliver content
New media approach

• a medium shapes us because we

partake of it over and over until it
becomes an extension of ourselves
• every medium emphasizes different
senses and encourages different
habits
• society is shaped in accordance with
the dominant medium of the day
New media
approach
• Marshall McLuhan divided all human
history into four periods, or epochs :
• Tribal age
• Literate age
• Print age
• Electronic age
• McLuhan suggests transitions between
periods were neither gradual nor
evolutionary; in each case the world
was wrenched from one era into the
next because of new developments in
communication technology.
‘New’ media
• technologies are proliferating faster than our cultural ,
legal, or educational institutions can keep up with
them
• Media technologies that we now consider to be ‘old’
were once ‘new’ (Marvin 1988; Gitelman & Pingree
2003)
• Broader questions about the contexts of their use and
their broader social and cultural impacts
• “What’s new for society about the new media?” rather
than simple ask “what are the new media”
(Livingstone, 1999: 60)
‘New’ media and internet

• The concept of new media is integrally

bound up with the history of the
Internet and the World Wide Web
• “It was the emergence and mass
popularization, of the Internet that
heralded the rise of new media,
understood as bringing together
computing and information
technologies, communications
networks, and media content” (Flew,
2008: 4)
‘New’ media and
internet
• “The electronic network that links
people and information through
computer and other digital devices
allowing person-to-person
communication and information
retrieval” (DiMaggio, 2001: 307)
• New media vs mass media
Digitalization in New
Media (Manovich, 2001)
• Distinguish between digital
communications media and older
analogue technologies
• Governed by numerical code
• Enables the reproduction,
manipulation and transmission of
messages with unprecedented
ease
Interactivity in New Media
(Feldman, 1997)
• Manipulability of information
• “The fact that media are manipulable at their point of
their delivery means something quite extraordinary:
users of the media can shape their own experience of it”
(4)
• User-generated content
• Threshold become lower and lower with new technology
Non-linear and Networks in New Media
(O'Shaughnessy and Casey, 2016)

• New media as networkable media

• Connected through networks that span vast
geographical spaces with relative ease
• information in digital form can be shared and
exchanged by large numbers of users
simultaneously
• Instantly reproduced, exchanged and circulated
• Multipurpose device (convergence of different
media sources)
• Convergence affects media consumption, media
distribution, ownership and production
Decentralisation in New Media
(O'Shaughnessy and Casey, 2016)

• Contrast with conventional media

• Shift from a centralized, one-to-
many mass communication to a
networked, many-to-many model of
media production, transmission and
consumption
• The media audience has fragmented
and differentiated
• Personalisation
Participatory culture

• “relatively low barriers to artistic expression

and civic engagement, strong support for
creating and sharing one’s creations, …”
(Jenkins, 2009: 3)
• Made possible in digital age
• Constitute a new social relation
• culture constructs audiences as active and
empowered to participate in the production of
cultural products (Jenkins 2006a; Burgess
2006; Burgess and Green 2009; Rosen 2006)
Participatory culture
• can take many forms, including blogging, gaming,
social media, commenting on forums, contributing
to wikis, uploading videos to YouTube, political
action and so on
• seemingly break away from the top-down hierarchy
of the culture industry.
• re-evaluate the roles of producers and consumers
no longer “occupying separate roles” (Jenkins
2006a, p. 3).
• audiences become co-creators of media content.
• enables audiences to challenge the power structure
of the culture industry
 Reference
Adorno, T. W. (2010). The culture industry: selected essays on mass culture. J. M. Bernstein (Ed.). London: Routledge.
Edensor, Tim. National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life. Bloomsbury Academic, n.d.
Fitzsimmons, Lorna, and John A. Lent. Asian Popular Culture in Transition. London ;: Routledge, 2013.
Feldman, Tony. An Introduction to Digital Media. Routledge, 1997. Remember to check citations for accuracy before including them in
your work
Fidler, Roger F. Mediamorphosis : Understanding New Media. Pine Forge Press, 1997.
Flew, Terry. New Media : an Introduction. 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, 2008
Fung, Anthony Y. H. Asian Popular Culture : the Global (dis)continuity. London ;: Routledge, 2013.
Hong, Seok-Kyeong, and Dal Yong Jin. Transnational Convergence of East Asian Pop Culture. Edited by Seok-Kyeong Hong and Dal Yong
Jin. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ;: Routledge, 2022.
Huat, Chua Beng. “Conceptualizing an East Asian Popular Culture.” Inter-Asia cultural studies 5, no. 2 (2004): 200–221.
Kidd, Dustin. Pop Culture FREAKS: Identity, Mass Media, and Society. 1st ed. Milton: Routledge, 2014.
Kim, Suk-Young. K-Pop Live : Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2018.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media : the Extensions of Man. London: Routledge, 2001.
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Lee. New York: Routledge, 2019.
Lim, Tai-Wei. Globalization, Consumption and Popular Culture in East Asia. New Jersey: World Scientific, 2016.
O'Shaughnessy, Michael, et al. Media & Society. Sixth ed., 2016.