Module-3 Media Bca Notes
Module-3 Media Bca Notes
HAROLD INNIS
Harold Adams Innis, a political economist developed an important discussion on media from
a Canadian perspective. He directly influenced Marshall McLuhan and is considered as a
central figure in communication theory. From the end of the Second World War until his
death in 1952, Innis examined the social history of communication by studying the
communication media of the last 4000 years. Two of his famous works on communication-
Empire and Communications (1950), and The Bias of Communication (1951) were published
from the manuscript which he left at his death.
Time-Biased and Space Biased Media
Harold Innis believed that the relative stability of different cultures depend on the balance
and proportion of their media. To study this balance and stability of culture, the following
aspects should be examined:
1. The working of specific communication technologies
2. The aspects of society which influence media and the contributions made by media to
society
3. The forms of power which are supported by specific media
For Innis, one of the major factors of social change is communication media. He says
that each medium embodies a bias in terms of the organization and control of information.
Any empire or society is generally concerned with duration over time and extension in space.
Based upon this bias, Innis has classified media into two types: Time Biased and Space
biased media
Time-biased media are durable, heavy and difficult to move. Because of this
difficulty, they do not encourage territorial expansion. It means that empires based on time
biased media is not interested in expansion across geographical boundaries. Since this type of
media has a long life, they encourage the extension of empire over time. Due to their static
nature and durability through time, Innis argued that time-biased media tend to promote the
maintenance of communities and tradition. Time biased media are considered to be
customary and related to the sacred and the moral aspects of society. Time-biased media
facilitate the development of social hierarchies. Stone and clay tablets are examples of time
biased media.
Space-biased media are light and manageable. They can be transported over large
distances. They are associated with secular and territorial societies. They facilitate the
expansion of empire across physical and territorial boundaries. Space biased media are
composed of materials that are light and easy to work with, but not very durable. Space-
biased media tend to foster impersonal, secular and administrative exchanges between
people. Paper is such a medium; it is readily transported, but has a relatively short lifespan.
Newspapers and electronic media such as television and the internet could be classified as
space-biased media because they allow messages to travel across vast distances and they are
relatively impermanent.
The predominant media used by a particular group at a particular time influences its
social organization. Time-biased media generally give rise to time-bound societies which are
based on tradition and community, concerned with the past, and religious and moral in
orientation. Space- biased media, in turn, gives rise to space-bound societies which
emphasize change, individuality and impersonal relations. They are concerned with the
present and future and are secular and rational in orientation.
According to Innis, the organization of empires seems to follow two major models.
The first model is militaristic and concerned with the conquest of space. Time biased
media that have supported the military conquering of space are lighter and easy to handle, so
that the constraints of long distances could be lessened. The second model is religious and
concerned with the conquest of time. Space biased media that supported religious empires
are relatively durable so that they could support the concepts of eternal life and endless
dynasties.
Innis believed that stable societies were able to achieve a balance between time- and
space- biased communications media. He also believed that change came from the margins of
society, since people on the margins invariably developed their own media. The new media
allow those on the periphery to develop and consolidate power, and ultimately to challenge
the authority of the centre.
MARSHAL MC LUHAN
Herbert Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher of communication theory.
His work is viewed as an important one in the study of media theory which has practical
applications in the advertising and television industries. McLuhan is known for creating the
expressions „the medium is the message‟, „the global village‟, and for „predicting the World
Wide Web‟ almost thirty years before it was invented.
‘McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy- The Making of Typographic Man’ written
in 1961 and published in 1962 is a major work in the fields of oral culture, print culture,
cultural studies, and media ecology. Throughout the book, McLuhan tries to reveal how
communication technology like alphabetic writing, the printing press, and the electronic
media affects cognitive organization, which in turn influences social organization. He traces
out the development from pre-alphabetic tribal humankind to the electronic age.
Mc Luhan classifies alphabets into two- the phonetic alphabet which is the modern set
of alphabets and logographic/logogramic writing systems, like hieroglyphics or ideograms.
According to McLuhan, the invention of movable type made fast the cultural and
cognitive changes that had already been taking place since the invention and implementation
of the alphabet. Print culture, started by the Gutenberg press in the middle of the fifteenth
century, brought about the cultural predominance of visual over oral culture. The main
concept of McLuhan's argument is that new technologies like alphabets, printing presses etc.
influence the thoughts of people which in turn affects social organization. According to
McLuhan, the beginning of print technology contributed to most of the salient trends in the
Modern period in the Western world like individualism, democracy, Protestantism, capitalism
and nationalism.
GLOBAL VILLAGE
In the early 1960s, McLuhan wrote that the visual, individualistic print culture would
soon be brought to an end and electronic media will replace visual culture with oral culture.
He calls this electronic interdependence. In this new age, mankind will move from
individualism and fragmentation to a collective identity. McLuhan's called this new social
organization global village. Global village refers to the notion that electronic
communication shrinks distances, while increasing opportunities for talk and cross-cultural
sharing. He also coined the term "surfing" to refer to rapid, irregular and multidirectional
movement through a heterogeneous body of documents or knowledge. McLuhan's argument
is based on the idea that technology has no moral aspect. It is only a tool that shapes an
individual's a society's self-conception and realization. What is interesting about McLuhan's
ideas on global village is his insight about the ways that electronic technologies would
change our daily business and how we relate to other people. McLuhan made accurate
predictions about the development of Internet. He also predicted the effects of the Internet.
Mc Luhan says that the economy will be totally reorganized around information. McLuhan
also believed that electronic technology would lead to the loss of private identity.
‘THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE’
McLuhan wants to argue that the medium contains its own message, which is
independent of the content. The medium does the same thing, no matter in what context.
McLuhan defines media as “any technology that creates extensions of the human body and
senses” He believed that these technological extensions had the effect of human senses.
Technology influenced the sensory balance of individuals, which in turn affected the societies
in which they lived. This process was the cause of all the major cultural changes in human
history.
McLuhan believed that in prehistoric times people lived in a condition where all the
senses worked together in harmony. “Before the invention of the phonetic alphabet, man
lived in a world where all the senses were balanced and simultaneous. The only way
preliterate people could communicate was through speech. He was concerned with the effects
of the phonetic alphabet, and of printing. The implications of the phonetic alphabet were that
the exchange of information was no longer instantaneous and that reading created individuals
because of the lonely nature of the activity. The phonetic alphabet also led to the dominance
of the sense of sight and the development of abstract thought. McLuhan perceived many far-
reaching consequences of the invention of print, but he viewed these developments
pessimistically. In contrast, he was much more hopeful about the electronic age, brought in
by the invention of the telegraph, radio, film, the telephone, the computer and television. The
electronic age restored humankind‟s lost sensorial balance. Electronic media did not extend
individual senses, as print media had done with the eye, but extended the entire human
sensory system.
In his discussion of medium is the message, McLuhan warns us that we are often
distracted by the content of a medium. He says that the personal and social consequences of
any medium result from the new scale that is introduced by any new technology. „The
medium is the message‟ tell us that noticing change in our societal or cultural ground
conditions indicates the presence of a new message, that is, the effects of a new medium.
Thus we can identify the new medium before it becomes obvious to everyone - a process that
often takes years or even decades. And if we discover that the new medium brings along
effects that might be harmful to our society or culture, we have the opportunity to influence
the development and evolution of the new innovation before the effects becomes persistent.
RAYMOND WILLIAMS
Raymond Henry Williams was a Welsh academic, novelist and critic. He was an
influential figure within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture,
the mass media and literature are a significant contribution to the Marxist critique of culture
and the arts. His work laid the foundations for the field of cultural studies and the cultural
materialist approach.
CULTURAL MATERIALISM
Raymond Williams developed the approach which he named 'cultural materialism' in
his books - Culture and Society (1958), The Long Revolution (1961), Marxism and Literature
(1977).
Cultural materialism tries to examine the processes employed by power structures,
such as the church, the state or the academy, to disseminate ideology. It explores the
historical context and political implications of the text. Through close textual analysis, it
further note the dominant hegemonic position and the possibilities for the rejection of that
position.
Cultural materialism in literary theory and cultural studies traces its origin to the work
of the left- wing literary critic Raymond Williams. Cultural materialism makes analysis based
in critical theory, in the tradition of the Frankfurt School.
Cultural materialists deal with specific historical documents and attempt to analyze a
particular moment in history. Williams viewed culture as a "productive process", a part of the
means of production, and cultural materialism deals with "residual" and "oppositional"
cultural elements. Cultural materialists extend the class-based analysis of traditional Marxism
by means of an additional focus on the marginalized. Cultural materialists analyze the
processes by which hegemonic forces in society use historically-important texts to validate or
inscribe certain values on the cultural elements.
Cultural materialists draw attention to the processes being employed by contemporary power
structures, such as the church, the state or the academy, to disseminate ideology. To do this
they explore a text‟s historical context and its political implications, and then through close
textual analysis note the dominant hegemonic position. They identify possibilities for the
rejection and/or subversion of that position.
HEGEMONY
"Hegemony" was most likely derived from the Greek egemonia, whose root is
egemon, meaning "leader, ruler, often in the sense of a state other than his own". Since the
19th century "hegemony" commonly has been used to indicate "political predominance,
usually of one state over another". Italian Communist thinker, activist, and political leader
Antonio Gramsci is perhaps the theorist most closely associated with the concept of
hegemony. For Gramsci, hegemony was a form of control exercised primarily through a
society's superstructure, as opposed to its base or social relations of production of a
predominately economic character. Gramsci further delineates two distinct forms of control,
as follows:
"Social hegemony" which means the "'spontaneous' consent given by the great masses of the
population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group
i.e. the ruling class. This consent is 'historically' caused by the prestige which the dominant
group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production. "Political
government" includes the "apparatus of state coercive power which 'legally' enforces
discipline on those groups who do not 'consent' either actively or passively. This apparatus is,
however, constituted for the whole of society in anticipation of moments of crisis of
command and direction when spontaneous consent has failed" Although they are useful for
understanding different modes, for Williams the ends of modernity cannot be viewed as what
we have now. Williams tried to understand that the ends of a „human order‟ are something we
must fight for. They are conditional, and no-one must rest from their particular political
understanding in willing and acting towards the ends they desire and feel to be right. Social
forms are evidently more recognisable when they are articulate and explicit. Many are formed
and deliberate, and some are quite fixed. But when they have all been identified they do not
form part of social consciousness in its simplest sense. They become social consciousness
only when they are lived, actively, in real relationships. And this practical consciousness is
always more than a handling of fixed forms and units. There is frequent tension between the
received interpretation and practical experience. Practical consciousness is almost always
different from official consciousness.
HABERMAS
Jurgen Habermas is a German sociologist and a philosopher in the tradition of critical
theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of
communicative rationality and the public sphere. His work focuses on the foundations of
social theory and epistemology, the analysis of advanced capitalistic societies and
democracy, the rule of law in a critical social-evolutionary context, and contemporary
politics, particularly German politics.
CULTURE AND PUBLIC SPACE
In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere Habermas argues that prior to
the 18th century, European culture had been dominated by a "representational" culture, where
one party sought to "represent" itself on its audience by overwhelming its subjects. Habermas
identifies "representational" culture as corresponding to the feudal stage of development. He
argued that the capitalist stage of development marked the appearance of the public sphere. In
public sphere, there occurred a public space outside of the control by the state, where
individuals exchanged views and knowledge. In Habermas‟ view, the growth in newspapers,
journals, reading clubs etc. marked the gradual replacement of "representational" culture with
public space. Habermas argued that the essential characteristic of the public space was its
"critical" nature. Unlike "representational" culture where only one party was active and the
other passive, the public space was characterized by a dialogue as individuals either met in
conversation, or exchanged views via the print media.
Habermas maintains that as Britain was the most liberal country in Europe, the culture
of the public sphere emerged there first around 1700, and the growth of public sphere took
place over most of the 18th century in Continental Europe. In his view, the French
Revolution was caused by the collapse of "representational" culture, and its replacement by
public sphere. According to Habermas, a variety of factors resulted in the eventual decay of
the public sphere, including the growth of a commercial mass media, which turned the critical
public into a passive consumer public; and the welfare state, which merged the state with
society so thoroughly that the public sphere was pushed out. It also turned the "public sphere"
into a site of selfish competition for the resources of the state rather than a space for the
development of a rational consensus. In his most famous work, the Theory of Communicative
Action (1981), Habermas criticised the process of modernization. He viewed the process as
an inflexible one forced by economic and administrative rationalization. Habermas outlined
how our everyday lives are penetrated by formal systems and public life is rationalized. The
boundaries between public and private, the individual and society are deteriorating.
Democratic public life cannot develop where matters of public importance are not discussed
by citizens. Habermas also proposes the possibility of the revival of the public sphere. In a
direct democracy-driven system, the public sphere is needed for debates on matters of public
importance.
„Study Hard, Study Daily, Only Study is going to change your life‟
Notes Developed By
Fr. Jithu Thomas
&
Dr. Anju Elizabeth Cherian