Table of Contents

Media Theory 1
Hypodermic Needle Theory
Stimulus → Response
● HNT/MBT
● Media are very powerful
● Lasswell’s Model - 1948
● Content Analysis

Media Theory 2
Persuasion
Message and reaction are no longer a direct relationship.
● The Invasion from Mars: A Study on the Psychology of Panic (Hadley Cantril et al.) - CRITICAL ABILITY
● Carl Hovland and the Yale Attitude Change Approach, Campaign experiments and findings
● Revision of the communicative Process
● Audience Related Factors (4)
● Message Related Factors (4)

Media Theory 3
Limited Effects and Functionalist Approaches
Adding social context. Manipulation→Persuasion→Influence→Function
● Two-step flow of communication model & opinion leaders.
● Robert Merton and the Polymorphic/Monomorphic Leaders
● Katz & Lazarsfeld and the primus inter pares
● Limited Effects
● Structural Functionalism (functional imperatives and the 4 functions/1 dysfunction)
● Uses and Gratification Theory

Media Theory 4
Long Term Effects and Return to the Idea of Powerful Media
Back to effects, but widening the landscape beyond studying short-term methods like campaigns.
● Agenda-Setting Hypothesis
● Noelle-Neumann and the Spiral of Silence Theory; return to powerful effects
● Bandwagon Effect & Asch (1951)
● Role of media
● Cultivation Theory, socialization, and long-term effects

Media Theory 5
The Frankfurt School
Forces of the culture industry are manipulating/oppressing/exploiting the masses. Intellectuals must identify them and liberate the masses.
● Lazarsfeld & Adorno School
● US Culture Industry
● Karl Marx, Alienation, & Commodity Fetishsim
● Substantial and Formal Rationalities
● Marx Weber’s rationalization of society & corresponding disenchantment of the world
● György Lukács & Reification
● Horkheimer & Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment
● Adorno on popular music
Media Theory 6
Edgar Morin
Not interested in discussing the value of mass culture. Just understanding it in its own terms.
● 1951: L’Homme et la mort (Man and Death)
● Cultural Relativism
● Self-Critical Method & Method of Totality
● Characteristics of Mass Culture
● 2 Antithetical Units: Bureaucracy—invention; Standardization—individuality
● Fundamental Principle: Cultural creation cannot be totally enclosed in an industrial production system.
● Rationalization & Standardization:
■ Division of labor and standardization actually protect individualization
■ Cycle
● 4 main takeaways, especially mass culture giving meaning to our presence in the world → full circle back to Morin’s work

Media Theory 7
Communicative Models
Models that consider communication as a technical transmission vs. a decoding transformation.
● Claude Shannon & Warren Weaver: The Mathematical Theory of Communication (1949)
● Noise, information, and the bit.
● Redundancy vs. Entropy
● Eco, Fabbri, and others: The Semiotic Information Model (1965)
● Code, Subcode, and Aberrant Decoding (4)
● Denotation, Connotation, & Anchoring

Media Theory 8
Introduction to Cultural Studies
A shift from studying context and audience to studying culture and media.
● Stuart Hall & CCCS
● Raymond Williams’ definition of culture
● Gramsci’s Traditional Intellectual vs. Organic Intellectual
● Ideology (Marx & Althusser)
● Gramsci & Hegemony
● Hall’s “reality effects”
● Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding Model”: Preferred, Negotiated, & Oppositional readings.

Media Theory 9
Cultural Studies and Audience Studies
Cultural Studies: Interest in the relationship between the meaning of text and formation of subjectivity; authors/texts build their readers.
Audience Studies: A shift to looking at different interpretations. They already knew semiotics, but they wanted to know WHO/WHY.
● The journal Screen
● Lacan, Foucault, & Screen Analysis
● Audiovisual texts & textual determinism
● Laura Mulvey: Scopophilia (voyeurism) & Narcissistic identification
● David Morley & Audience Studies: continuum of “reading” positions
● James Lull & Ethnographic Method on television viewership
● James Lull’s 2 Types of social uses of television: Structural & Relational
Media Theory 10
The Toronto School
Shift in perspective: The influence of the media is intrinsic to their technological nature.
● Innis & Bias: Deforming influence (Light vs. Heavy media) Prejudice
● McLuhan: Effects of media on culture through technology, not content
■ “The medium is the message” (and the message is the human being)
■ Media are extensions of the human senses, and they reshape our sensorium.
■ Hot vs. Cool Media & the History of civilization proposed by McLuhan
■ The laws of media (tetrad)
Media Theory 1
Hypodermic Needle Theory
Industrial and transport revolution → Mass media
Mass media develops in mass society (mass press, cinema 1895, radio1896)
Beginning of 1900s - Conservatives vs. socialists on mass media.
The first reflections on media focused on the effects that the media could have on the public, especially in a propaganda situation.
Propaganda through the media becomes fundamental in WWI. First reflections on media developing, specifically the effect on the
audience.
War of the Worlds, Orson Welles - 1 million/6 million, some saw light and smelled poisons!
Hypodermic Needle Theory/Magic Bullet Theory: The process of mass communication is seen as a process of inoculation of
messages, ideas, and orientations into a helpless and passive (mass) public.
Accounts for convictions that were diffused in the first decades of the 20th century.
★ The idea of a “helpless and passive (mass) public”
★ Not an official theory, diffused accounts
★ If propaganda succeeds in being presented, you are injected with a message, you will do what it says → NEEDLE
★ Magic bullet: Media is shot, desired effect takes effect
★ Effect is the same for everyone, you OBEY
This theory based on 2 theoretical assumptions:
★ Receivers of media thought to be members of mass always. Individuality in society is lost, homogenous, people don’t know each
other. Lack traditions.
★ Behavioral psychology (opposite of psychoanalysis): The mind is a “black box” (can’t study it). Behavior is the only scientific
observable unit that can be studied by psychologists.
Stimulus (message) - response relationship. (PAVLOV - classical conditioning) Conditioned stimulus → conditioned response.
Relate to media? image/brand → positive/negative response (though PAVLOV did not consider translation to humans)
HNT: Indice behavior by means of stimulus and combine this idea w/ the conviction that you have a mass society of lost individuals.
MEDIA ARE VERY POWERFUL, can induce any kind of propaganda message.
Why do we care? Foundational theory of mass theories, others built off of it by contradiction.

Lasswell’s Model - 1948

Communicator, content, channel, receiver, effect.
(ex. Spanish gov., vaccine, TV, Spanish Primetime viewers, increase vaccine rates? maybe?)
★ Uni-directional, no feedback, intentional transmission, active sender (stimulus), passive receiver (reaction/response)
★ Content analysis and effects on society
DOES NOT CONSIDER RELEVANT the communicative SOCIAL SITUATION. Effect is only on the receiver.
Manipulative intention of sender. Effects seen as predictable because the content is seen as a simple stimulus. ONE EFFECT.

Content Analysis of mass media. Analyze the effects. Under this theory, if you study the content, you will know the effect.
Only studies clear content of sender to receiver that can be studied by all researchers in the same way. Content interpreted in the same
way by sender and receiver. Content analysis treats messages as stimulus, no possibility of varied interpretations.
★ Extreme simplification of messages, assume that everyone interprets the text in the same way.
(i.e. amount of space dedicated to news, size of headline)
Objective, systematic, quantitative, of clear content.
ALL FIT TOGETHER WELL: LASSWELL, NEEDLE, BEHAVIORISM THEORY (***relationship between stimulus and only/necessary
response directly linked to change behavior).
Media Theory 2
Persuasion
The Invasion from Mars: A Study on the Psychology of Panic (Hadley Cantril et al.)
Princeton Radio PRoject → Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia (Paul F. Lazarsfeld)
★ Studied mass behavior and psychology of the common people. Radio considered highly credible source. Focus on easiest factor:
audience psychology.
★ Key factor: CRITICAL ABILITY (related to the level of education and economic status). Instead of establishing direct connection
between message and reaction, we now focus on who believes the message and why. BUT, still do not look at the social
context.
Conclusion: Media has a powerful effect on behavior, and the most critical people should educate the common people. Message and
reaction are no longer a direct relationship. Beyond MBT.

Carl Hovland and the Yale Attitude Change Approach - Psychological approach to persuasion.
Revision of the communicative process: cause (stimulus) → (psychological processes) → effect (response)
Conducted experiments in campaign situations to understand how media messages can be persuasive and when they are not.
(Controlled situations to discover causal relations (ind./dep.)
★ Assumes a resistance; Try to understand conditions on which people change their mind or don’t when exposed to persuasive
methods
★ Campaigns: Trying to achieve specific aims, time-span usually short, intensive, tires for wide coverage, effectiveness is open to
assessment, authoritative sponsorship, not necessarily popular, has to be “sold” to audience, based on a framework of shared
values (i.e. vaccine campaign)
Finding: Media campaigns usually fail, sometimes reinforced previous attitudes.
Audience Related Factors:
★ Interest in acquiring information (don’t care or can’t access)
★ Selective exposure (people filter their own bubble, campaigns mostly received by people who already agree)
● Cognitive Dissonance Theory: We all want our attitude/conviction/behavior to get along well. If I love animals and am a
vegetarian, no dissonance. If I am a smoker, and know it causes cancer, you have a dissonance. YOU MUST DO
SOMETHING… like ignore the smoking campaign, maybe put a cover over the campaign on the box. → SELECTIVE
EXPOSURE.
★ Selective perception (audiences are not psychologically naked in front of media messages, people even start to understand
messages that go against their beliefs in ways that align!)
● Method of Resistance #1 - Assimilation Effect: When receiver sees no great difference between views of
source/receiver, little care about subject, and good image of source, receiver perceives the views expressed in the
message as more similar to their own.
● Method of Resistance #2 - Contrast Effect: When opposite conditions, receivers perceive the distance between their
own views and those of the message as greater than they are.
★ Selective retention (people tend to remember things that align with their own opinions/attitudes - agree/remember,
disagree/forget)
Again, we go back to the assumption that audiences resist attempts to change their opinions.
***STRANGE: While some studies focused on the audience, some focused on the sender.
Message Related Factors:
★ Source credibility: If results are measured just after the message is delivered, it is what you would think. But, after a some time:
● Sleeper Effect: You reject the message only because you don’t like the source. But maybe after a while, you remember
the message and forget the source, and you are persuaded. (source can be person)
★ Order of arguments: When receivers know about the topic and are interested, RECENCY (if you are interested you keep
listening, and last arguments are alway the most important, reconsider everything starting from the end). When receivers have
no previous knowledge/interest, PRIMACY (stop listening).
● Primacy Effect: Arguments arriving first are more effective.
● Recency Effect: Arguments at the end are more effective.
★ Sidedness (“one-sided” or “both-sided” communication): Experiment on WWII Soldiers (Hovland, Lumsdaine, & Sheffield)
 ● “Both-sided” is more effective when the audience has the opposite opinion and a high-level of education. Why? They
are used to a more complex discourse.
● “Single-sided” is more effective when the audience already agrees and has a lower level of education. Why? Well why
would you give the opposite argument to someone who already agrees :)
● This was an important experiment to go beyond Gerber’s argument of one-sided propaganda, though he may have a
point for the context of a TOTALITARIAN STATE (when there is control over everything and no other opinions are
possible).
★ Explicitness of conclusions:
● Implicit more effective with higher engagement in subject, higher knowledge of subject, and higher intellectual skill.
Why? If you “get to that conclusion on your own”, it is “your opinion”. Can get there alone.
● Explicit more effective w/ complex issues and an unfamiliar audience. Why? Otherwise you can’t even reach the
conclusion. They want to be sure. Also, why would you think if you don’t care? In this case, they would have to take
that step for them.

Overall → Starting to question HNT/MBT, but it doesn’t deny that media CAN have certain effects.
*PROBLEM: The isolated experiments conducted here ignore the complexities of the real world. Studying in a lab rat situation is not
actually studying in the real phenomenon they are claiming to study.
SO TAKE WITH A GRAIN OF SALT. BE SKEPTICAL. :)
Media Theory 3
Limited Effects and Functionalist Approaches
Two-step flow of communication model: Focus on influence.
Ideas flow: media → opinion leaders → less active sections of the population (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944)
***Personal relationships, mass communications media now being studied in a social context***
*Don’t think about influencers, they are NOT the same as opinion leaders. Here, we talk about personal relationships and trust.
Opinion Leaders (OL): Some people are very involved, they know more about the issue, part of the audience who try to influence,
react more. These people are key. Messages reach the OLs first, who then mediate it to the rest. (*Still normal people, not famous)

Lazarsfeld & Katz 1955 - Had done studies on small groups and mass communication. No one had yet joined them… until now.
New view: Recipients of messages cannot be studied as isolated in the community. They are altered by opinion leaders. OPPOSITE OF
HN/TMBT.
Robert Merton on Opinion Leaders.
- Polymorphic Leader: Influence in many different areas because they know everyone in a community.
- Monomorphic Leader: Contacts only with some people, but OL because they are recognized as having competency in certain
thematic areas. (*Someone can be an OL in one field, and a follower in another)
Katz & Lazarsfeld - OL → as a primus inter pares (“First among equals”). The process of influence is exercised among people with the
same status (so steps are not necessarily 2). But the OL is someone recognized as more knowledgeable/interested. The message usually
goes from someone SLIGHTLY more knowledgeable to someone SLIGHTLY less knowledgeable.
★ And this influence may be greater than the direct influence of mass communication because in the case of OLs, you are equals,
someone you trust, someone like you. You don’t suspect manipulation.
★ *Everyone, at a certain level, can be an OL. Even within the same field, someone can switch from OL to follower. So again, the
steps are not necessarily 2. Can have many in certain circles. Chain.
So, here masses do not exist. We have small groups. As interpersonal communication is key, the influence of mass communication is
mostly limited to reinforcing values/attitudes…
LIMITED EFFECTS: Not direct effects (HNT/MBT). Mass media messages do not usually change attitudes. It may take a close
friend/associate to have that level of effect.

Structural Functionalism
★ Society is a living organism, and it changes for homeostasis
★ No interest in media effects, focus is on *FUNCTIONS*
★ Everyday production and dissemination of messages begins to be studied
Every social system must solve 4 types of functional problems (aka functional imperatives):
Adaptation (to environment)
Goal attainment
Integration (the parts of the system must be integrated)
Latent pattern maintenance (related to socialization)
***System maintains itself***
Conflict as a force for transformation is dismissed.
Theoretical study of this doesnt mean people don’t still study persuasion… just less important?
Society=living organism
● different parts have different functions/purposes
● homeostasis
● even the hard-headed obey society (mostly)
Values, and counter values (act in a way that is functional for society)
Classic criticism for structural functionalism and essentially marxism: See conflict as disruptive, not functional to the change of society.
Dysfunctional.
Media perform various functions w/n society.
Charles Wright
1. Provide warnings of imminent threats of danger. (If it is mass communication, it also serves legalization function)
 2. Contributes to everyday institutional operations of the society (i.e. stock market) ~didn’t have weather forecast or
map ;)~
Lazarsfeld & Merton
3. Status conferral: media → important; important → media. (endorsement, heuristics, recognition)
4. Enforcement of social norms: What is the function of a scandal? Social norms exist before exposure. But maybe a while
ago, something happened and no one cared. But once it is covered by media, it is exposed. Reinforces the social norm.
5. Narcotising dysfunction {NOT RELATED TO INFORMATION OVERLOAD} -one dysfunction-: People confuse the
idea of being well-informed with taking action. (sleep)

Uses & Gratification Theory

The question “What do the media do to people?” becomes “What do people do with the media?”
*Investigates how media are used by people to gratify their needs.
★ “uses” approach - personal mindset pre-potent, look for gratification.
★ media of no influence if “no use”, but if gratification, then ok.
Social functionalist theory vs. uses & gratification theory → media serves to satisfy needs and maintain social equilibrium of society.
Kinds of needs satisfied by media*:
● Cognitive
● Affective - self identity
● Personal integrative - confidence, status, emotional stability (i.e. listening to news to feel like a mature citizen)
● Social integrative - you read comics because all your friends do, something to talk about
● Tension release - shut down my brain
Needs of audience = INDEPENDENT VARIABLE
Media does not create the needs of people.
5 KEY POINTS:
1. Audience is active; mass media goal-oriented
2. Not straight-line effect of media on attitudes/behavior
3. Media compete for need gratification
4. Goals of mass media can be derived from peoples data
5. Intellectuals have no reason to despise people who consume certain media because they have their reasons (use and interpret
media according to their own goals)
6 LIMITS:
● Reception is simple individual cognitive act (psychologism)
● Does not consider context of reception (which may be fundamental to deriving meaning)
● Problematic to postulate that people can recognize and express their motives for certain mediums and that people understand
a process like that (conscious/unconscious)
● Answers given by audience are the exhaust all interpretive possibilities
● Satisfaction/need/gratification concepts are used without considering how the meaning of them is interpreted by the audience.
● Answers treated statistically despite possible different interpretations that respondents may give to the same term.
Media Theory 4
Long Term Effects and Return to the Idea of Powerful Media
70s/80s → revival of interest in effect, challenging limited effect theory. But so far, effect studies have only studied short-term methods
like campaigns… the landscape has changed.
Agenda-Setting Hypothesis *common knowledge*
McCombs & Shaw: Media establish the issues on which people think. The public’s agenda is shaped by the media’s agenda. The news
cannot change your opinion, BUT it can tell you ABOUT what to think. {“Stimulus-response” communication model - HDNT-type
criticism, no resistance}
Interrelated agendas: public, media, politis (more complex than one way media → public) ~importance orders 1,2,3~

Spiral of Silence Theory: Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann in the 1970s. Return to powerful effects.
{don’t think about intention, not ex. of manipulation}
Opposes idea of limited effects:
★ TV - no selective perception (accumulation+consonance) - more difficult SP is, more powerful both for reinforcing and changing
opinions
- Accumulation: repeated material
- Consonance: even when the media gives different opinions, the account is similar. unanimous opinion, SP only
exercised if already have an opinion or TV gives multiple.
★ Specific conceptualization of public opinion - cohesion between and consensus w/n cannot be taken for granted. Strong
pressures in society to conform, strong threat of social isolation for those who don’t. People observe the social environment
and are aware of others’ opinions all the time. Threatens to isolate those who dissent. We become aware of dominant opinions,
always in tune w/ public opinion (i.e. FASHION)
Spiral of Silence Experiment: 2 questions, intention of vote and who they think is going to win. Public
opinion changes, they go with the winner.
Bandwagon Effect: Asch (1951) Conformity Experiment - Conformity for different reasons:
- Normative conformity: know you are right, but why make waves? With a partner, less
conforming but they deny the influence (though they recognize they like them).
Noelle-Neumann described how the fear of isolation drives people who perceive that they do not have
the dominant opinion to fall silent on their opinion to conform to the dominant. Public opinion is a
means of social control because it “demands consent or at least compels silence, or abstention, from
contradiction”.
*Those who think they have the dominant opinions will speak, reinforcing that it is dominant. Those
who think they have the minority remain silent, reinforcing that it is the minority opinion. We also
observe you as silent and you double down. SPIRAL OF SILENCE & SPIRAL OF NOISE.
Role of the media in this?
● Generate public opinion because they create environmental pressure to which people respond. Amplification/reduction of
trends. People look to the media to know the climate of people and evaluate where we stand.
● Media contribute to public opinion in 2 ways:
- Articulation Function: give specific argument to agreers, disagreers have nothing. Perception of dominant opinion
spirals upward.
- Those having perceived minority opinion are more likely to speak up if they have media support.
★ ***SO MEDIA CAN BREAK THE SPIRAL OF SILENCE. No longer afraid of being the only one, like the partner Asch. Explains
trends that appear that you don’t know why. Before they didn't show, they got the courage. Sometimes we make a decision not
based on the decision but on what people we want to be a part of decide, sense of belonging.

Cultivation Theory: George Gerbner, links issues of effects with SOCIALIZATION

Studied TV (content analysis) - TV constructs mental representation of social reality.
● Most relevant + constant learning system in society
● Messages absolved in LONG PERIOD OF TIME (against short/limited effects theory)
● Inc. TV consumption means inc. in seeing social reality like TV. Divide of people based on amount of TV consumption.
 Mainly studied violence through content analysis.
# “violent” (*definition issue) acts on TV per hour in the U.S.
Inc. TV consumption, inc. perception of danger in the world (mean world syndrome)
Violence in the media as a form of social control. ~Gerbner~
Other findings of studies on media/violence Signorielli & Gerbner:
● Media exposure to violence boosts public estimates of crime/violence
● Significant relationship between exposure to crime shows/TV and approval of police brutality and bias against civil liberties
● TV viewing related to feeling of anxiety and fear of victimization
● TV viewing tends to cultivate presumption of guilt over innocence
Problems of Theory:
● Failure of result replication
● Problem of the casual direction between strong media consumption and a certain worldview remains open
● Research based on content analysis:
- Simplistic theory of reception and TV viewing
- Absence of any kind of interest in the semiotic functioning of media texts
Media Theory 5
The Frankfurt School *Marxian vs. Marxism
Founded in 1923, still active, Main historical figures: Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Löwenthal, Erich Fromm,
Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth; Two important associates: Walter Benjamin, Sigfried Krakauer
Marxist, but not orthodox Marxists
*Critical theory: [never formalized] shared critical attitude towards the social life of the time, seen as contradictory
★ Forces exploiting the masses, manipulating, oppressing
★ Intellectuals must liberate the masses
★ We must identify forces going against authentic human interest
Lazarsfeld & Adorno School → Breakdown of partnership
- Lazarsfeld does empirical-pragmatic approach research
- Adorno: Society must be analyzed as a whole, parts have no meaning alone; Suspicious of empirical research, no meaning if you
don’t start in totality.
Society has 3 structural dimensions: ECONOMIC, POLITICAL, & CULTURAL
(But society all roots in an economic basis)
Problem: Fascism starting at that time voting far right, maybe we have to study culture + media. Consumer capitalism/mass comms/mass
entertainment also beginning in the 20s/30s.
Horkheimer & Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment described the Marxist thought that mass culture is beginning to be seen as
responsible for the fading of the revolutionary potential of the masses.
General ideas about (US) culture industry [simple+naive]
- Cinema, radio, press, records → media system = culture industry
- US culture is driven by advertisement, not for the goal of culture… the goal is consumption. So, the media manipulated people
to consume.
- System is part of the capitalist system - commodities, aimed at mass consumption. Receivers are consumers of pre-packaged
material, NO CHOICE. (the media industry manipulates desire for economic purposes and consumers “choose” between very
similar products).
- Products are STANDARDIZED and HOMOGENIZED.
- Cultural industry also performs a political function, legitimizing the dominant ideology and values (duh, owned by the dominant
class).
- Contradiction of capitalism is inevitable.
- Superficial enjoyment, the masses don’t think, they conform. (homogeneity of products, homogeneity in thinking among the
mass public). “One-dimensional mind”, false needs created by the media are satisfied.
*HDNT criticism, mass audience, manipulated (oversimplification)

ALIENATION (Karl Marx)

Unknown for 90 years.
We are social beings, we express ourselves and find ourselves in work. products of work are embodiments of social relations. LABOUR
= alienated work. [factories, commodities]
Workers sell themselves as commodities, no control over their work, condition pre-established tasks, only part of the work, product is
not yours. “Alien object”. {Pg. 38 TB - exploitation, humans in conflict w/ each other}

COMMODITY FETISHISM (Karl Marx) Surplus value → measure of exploitation of the worker

Max Weber: Rationalization of society & corresponding disenchantment of the world.

★ Substantial Rationality → Rational actions taken w/n system of values, stress on ends, ends-oriented.
★ Formal rationality → means-oriented, no specific value.
Modern society, no one shared worldview, several/no substantive rationalities. Formal rationality becomes an end in itself. Nothing else.
Ex. Bureaucracy and the “iron cage” [Weber]
Irrational reasons, just imposing administrative order on the world.
Formally rational, not rational in the end. Modern world = technical-rational logic.
 Anything not following administrative (i.e. emotions) is excluded.
- DISENCHANTMENT OF THE WORLD
- Consequence of enlightenment (hostile to religion because no rational)
- DESACRALISATION: lose ability to experience the world beyond bureaucratic or scientific logic.

György Lukács (similar to Marx but didn’t read Marx) & REIFICATION
*Fordism & Taylorism on the rise: Factory form, timing, efficiency. Ford factory, using Taylor’s ideas, invented the assembly line.
★ Mechanical rationality dominates both manual and intellectual work and colonizes the way people think.
★ New idea apart from Marx → REIFIED THINKING: Fragmented, alienated thinking, like the work done by modern people.
○ Manual + intellectual work. ex. Journalist suppresses his opinion. Performs technical task.
★ Increasing specialization makes it impossible to understand the world as a whole.
★ The modern world is a morally incoherent world, characterized by the rationality of the means and the irrationality of the ends
(or by the rationality of its parts and the irrationality of the whole).
FAILURE OF ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT.
Few people are rich, and they exploit the rest. Environmental problems - not rational!
Planes are rational, technical. Using thousands a day? Not rational.
Air conditioning, the part is rational, not the whole.
*RATIONALITY OF PART, IRRATIONALITY OF THE WHOLE. Not substantive.
Weber - no agreement on final goals, no substantial rationalities.
Lukacs - humans have specialized thought, and can't understand the world.

Dialectic of Enlightenment - There is an internal contradiction in the logic of enlightenment.

(Enlightenment - general cultural phenomenon, follow the reason, rational + free from prejudice.)
Rational means for irrational ends. Ex. Factory has an irrational end (alienation).
The cultural industry turns creativity into commodity. The fetishism of commodity creates a pseudo-reenchantment of the world.
★ So…the pervasiveness of formal logic leaves us with a meaningless world.
Marx had analyzed the logic of domination in the economy, Weber did so in politics, critical theory shows how this has penetrated
cultural life as well. Culture industry is anti-Enlightenment because it prevents the development of autonomous and independent
people.
*The critical theory is: Cultural industry [anti-enlightenment, external, dominated by externally imposed values] penetrates
cultural life.
The productive logic of industry is incorporated into the products of the culture industry and people consume a reproduction of these
work processes, “the automatic succession of regulated operations”. The products of the culture industry are homogenized and
prescribe all reactions (contrary to the ideal of individuality in a free society).

Adorno on popular music (culture): “The whole structure of popular music is standardized, even where the attempt is made to
circumvent standardization”. There is an important difference between popular culture and good, serious culture. (Ex. music, musicians,
parts arranged in TOTALITY. Structure is highly standardized now. Superficial recognition of parts not leading to a totality
understanding.) → The part becomes an end rather than a means. FORMAL RATIONALITY.
Still confused? In standardized popular music, listening is reduced to recognising individual elements. Differently from what
happens in serious music (and in all serious art), in popular music and in the other products of the culture industry this
recognition does not lead to the understanding of an original totality and it becomes an end rather than a means.
This is why popular culture indices escapism + conformity.
*FREE TIME = EXTENSION OF WORK: Through the products of the culture industry the logic of the factory and alienated labor
reaches free time. Free time is not the time when people can pursue their own interests and the realization of their individuality, but an
extension of work where everyone does the same things. Commodities consumed are not art. ALIENATION CONTINUES. Everyone
does the same thing, like a factory.
CULTURAL INDUSTRY: FALSE NEEDS SATISFIED. FALSE PROMISE OF HAPPINESS & FREEDOM. ***”Euphoria in unhappiness”. The
masses are integrated into an unjust-society.
*Criticism: No solution offered. Is it possible to break out?
Media Theory 6
Edgar Morin
Edgar Morin (1921): Anthropologist, sociologist, philosopher.
1951: L’Homme et la mort (Man and Death)
Trilogy on industrial mass culture.
1956 - The Cinema or the Imaginary Man
1957 - The Stars
1962: L’esprit du temps (The Spirit of the Times) → general view of mass culture as a complex system, interesting view of
method.
Morin criticizes:
★ Communication research
★ Everything up to Frankfurt School
★ “Administrative” or “bureaucratic” sociology, similar to the criticisms that the Frankfurt School endorses [you can’t study just
parts in isolation, mass industry is a complex system; mass culture has certain effects of certain messages on certain people].
★ The intellectual abstractions that criticized the culture industry without drawing on concrete analysis.
But unlike Horkheimer & Adorno, he is not interested in discussing the value of mass culture. Mass culture is a culture.
Cultural relativism → no superior POV in any culture, own contexts.

SELF-CRITICAL METHOD: When you observe a phenomenon, you change the phenomenon. True in physics, true in anthropology.
You study a culture, you change it. And you study from a certain position - objective? eh. “There is no knowledge without the knowledge
of knowledge”. METHOD deforms object.
You need external POV of yourself/methods to know your limits.
METHOD OF TOTALITY: encompasses self-critical method because it tends not only to consider a phenomenon in its
interdependencies, but also to consider the observer himself as part of a system of relations.
“Frustrated aggressiveness” w/o self-critical implementation and looking at one’s own view/definition of culture.
According to Morin, it is important:
★ That the observer participates directly in the object of his or her research.
★ To avoid the abstract and bureaucratic sociologism of the researcher that is content to isolate a part of the material object of
his research without trying to see the relationships between the different sectors of reality. [Administrative solution criticism -
everything up to Frankfurt School; you can’t study just parts in isolation, and METHOD OF TOTALITY too].
You can’t study something without a little bit of <3.

Characteristics of mass culture: 1) Complexity 2) Lack of autonomy 3) Universality

2 ANTITHETICAL UNITS
Bureaucracy—invention
Standardization—individuality
1) The imaginary is structured on the basis of archetypes [ex. damsel in distress] […]The archetypes provide the big themes of the
imaginary. Pleasure of repetition + novelty. In addition, there are rules, conventions and genres that impose their structure on
the works. Finally, there are also repertoires of typical situations and typical characters.
2) The culture industry standardizes the great novelistic themes and reduces prototypes and archetypes to clichés.
3) Cultural industry demands individualized products.
Rational organization + alienation of the work (Frankfurt).
i.e. archetype - damsel in distress, movie genres - typical situation and characters. *stable
Culture industry uses archetypes + standardizes them even more. But the condition is, they must be unique. You have standardized ways
of individualizing things. One moment in which you need invention.

*Talking about all media in the system, including entertainment. *Not criticizing mass culture, just understanding it in its own terms.*
Fundamental Principle: Cultural creation cannot be totally enclosed in an industrial production system.
Concentration in one field production source contradicts the need for variety. Decentralization + competition. Tendency toward a
relative autonomy of creation within the production process. But creation tends to be production…
Rationalization & Standardization: Very rigorous division of labor, analogous to factory, ex. movie to novel, adapters/writers (by
specialized genre)... who’s the author? This goes with standardization.
*Connect with Marx’s alienation.
The author can no longer identify with the work, however, division of labor and standardization actually protect individualization.
Tension between standardization + individuation resolved with compromise:
More culture → more need for individuation → more standardization.

*cycle
1) On the one hand, the products of the mass culture industry are aimed at an average audience (in the sense of a varied one.)
Seek variety in news or the imaginary.
2) On the other hand, “the search for a large public implies the search for a common denominator.
Syncretism is the most appropriate word to express the tendency to homogenize a whole diversity of contents under a common
denominator.

4 main ideas:
★ Culture industry guarantees a good average quality level of products. [Inc. quality]
★ Industrial culture is “the only terrain of communication between social classes”. [way to dialogue with others]
★ Mass culture is a universal culture (its genres have a lot to do with ancient narratives and, at the same time, these narratives are
translated and distributed worldwide). [fundamental in the construction of universal culture]

★ Mass culture can be seen as a sort of secular religion. [giving meaning to our presence in the world]

*Media is not capable of answering questions like death, but it keeps

away our fear of dying… is that its main function? Back to the
beginning! Edgar Morin’s 1951: L’Homme et la mort (Man and
Death). Full circle :)
Media Theory 7
Communicative Models
Claude E. Shannon (1916-2001): “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” (1948)
Claude Shannon & Warren Weaver: The Mathematical Theory of Communication (1949) → application of the model, how
to send maximum information through the wire and how to measure band widths.
Selects messages from a set of possible messages. Arrow = channel.
LINEAR MODEL, concerned with TECHNICAL problems of communication and
the level of accuracy with which signals can be transmitted.
NOISE: Anything added, not intentional, distortions, fracking. (doesn’t have to be only
audio, just anything that makes it more difficu;t to decode).
Technical noice vs. semantic noise (doesn’t affect transmission, just affects
communication).
INFORMATION: Measure of the predictability of a signal (# of options the transmitter
has). The bit (or Shannon), the basis of computer science, is the unit of measurement of information between 1 & 2.
The idea of code used in information theory is that of a merely syntactic code (positions, BINARY options), not a
semantic code (based on content).
***The info of the baby in the example has 5 bits of info. 11111. You could have had something like 11110. Info in the
number of binary digits to encode a message. It has nothing to do with the content, it is just the number of
options of the source.

The problem at hand: Security + overcoming noise.

Redundancy & Entropy Ex. words are not equally probable in a given language. It depends
on the previous letters/words.
What is predictable or A measure of the number of 1,3,5,7,9,11,? - If it is 13 you don;t really need it. If it isn;t you
conventional in a message. available options. definitely need more info. 13 is redundant. 2 is not.
● High predictability ● Low predictability
Ex. If a dog bites a man, not news. A guy biting dogs? NEWS.
● Low informational ● High informational
*CONVENTIONS are important forms of redundancy.
content content
Ex. Rhyme poetry imposes repeated and predictable patterns. Low
entropy, high redundancy. By convention, the last word is one
syllable, rhymes with day, must be a noun, and must make sense.
Ex. Genres, expectations
Ultimately, we can say what we want to say with less. But redundancy is aesthetic satisfaction → tension released. If it doesn’t
follow convention, it is not easily understood.
Ex. Over the phone, you need more redundancy. Certain channels need more redundancy. Spoken is more redundant than written.
★ This all ties back to the central studies of the communication model: Transmission of information from the sender to
the receiver. Unit, direction. Interest of model to overcome noise. Receiver is not part of the message construction. So this
model is in line with authors of manipulation and the passive receiver/audience.
⤷ BUT, once you start talking about human beings, this model makes no sense.

Semiotic Informational Model (Eco, Fabbri, and others 1965)

→ On the decoding of messages, not the transmission but
TRANSFORMATION (big change from focus of previous model)
→ We cannot overlook the way the message is interpreted by the
receiver. We need to look at the transformation, the transition from
encoding to decoding (code).
→ Code is semantic (content). Ex. “dog” is the visual code, and the
image of a sound, for the representation of the actual living animal, a
dog.
Confused? LET’S TALK ABOUT CODES:
Code: A system of rules by which a plane of expression is associated with a plane of content.
Subcode: A system of particular rules that are established within a certain code in certain domains. (ex. the subcode of the sports press)
 ⤷ Ex. Within english, you have for example, the subcode that we practice here in Media class, like “agenda setting”. Or we have
expressions, or references, ex. “John Snow; winter is coming”.

***Remember, the semiotic information model does not consider communication as a transmission, but as a transformation. The
emphasis is on decoding. It is wrong to assume that receivers decode messages using exactly the same code(s) and subcode(s) that
were used in the production phase. “Aberrant decoding” is normal.

Structurally problematic communication model, as the design does not show that the final received meaning is a result of a set of factors,
and decoding is not always symmetrical. But it is definitely a more applicable model, discussing how there is always transformation in
communication.

ABERRANT DECODING
★ ONE. Incomprehension due to absence of code. [ex. completely different language, noise, etc.]
★ TWO. Incomprehension due to code gap. [You understand, but not very well, you don’t get the implications.] [OR, the code
may be SLIGHTLY different, ex. ranking symbols, general vs. captain - symbols]
★ THREE. Incomprehension due to circumstantial interference. [ex. vaccine is 95% effective, interprets it as not effective]
★ FOUR. Rejection due to delegitimization of sender. [they get the message, and they simply don’t believe it.]
***Umberto Eco’s “semiological guerilla warfare”: It is possible to oppose the forces of the dominant discourse by controlling the
interpretation of media messages. No one can control the source, but through education and reception, you can make explicit the
difference between the sender code and another. Educate to facilitate systematic decoding (teach a code).

DENOTATION & CONNOTATION… codes to the next level

E R C : denotation
/dog/: domesticated mammal, omnivorous, with an excellent sense of smell, four legs…
(E R C) R C: connotation
“dog”: fidelity
★ Connotation is not about personal interpretation, it is built on denotation. Sign built on a sign. Relation built on relation. It is
not subjective, there is a CULTURAL SIGNIFICATION. You can have a ‘connotative sign’. 1 word/symbol/etc. can also have
multiple connotations.
“find ideology at the connotative level”

Anchoring: interpretation of verbal text guides interpretation of a visual.

Can control both denotation + connotation.

→ Denotative can still be seen without code, but not connotation.

“misunderstanding” → reading
Media Theory 8
Introduction to Cultural Studies
Cultural studies is a disciplinary field that grew out of the activities of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS,
1964-2002) in Birmingham. Key period: 1968-1979 (under the direction of Stuart Hall)
★ A shift from studying context and audience to studying culture and media. What is culture?
Raymond Williams’ (1921-1988) definition of culture:
■ A general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development;
■ A particular way of life, whether of a people, a period, a group or humanity in general [They don’t
want to mean something, they just do];
■ The world and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity [This constructs meaning,
these activities want to mean something].
Cultural studies are concerned with the second and third meanings.
Culture is the most difficult word to define. Critical activity (this research) was seen as militant activity.

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)

Traditional Intellectual vs. Organic Intellectual

● Considers himself as a disinterested follower of ● Someone who is organically related to a certain social
traditional values; group;
● Does not consider its intellectual work to be affected by ● His function is to give homogeneity to a certain social
social conditions and the interests of the dominant group and to make this group aware of its own function
group; in the economic field as well as in the political and social
● However, this is not true and the traditional intellectual field;
contributes to reinforcing the ideology of the dominant ● Has to be actively involved in practical life in order to lay
social group (he is organic to the dominant social the foundations for a new conception of the world.
group).

***Not everyone has the function of intellectual in society.

Organic intellectuals are smarter, more prepared intellectuals that must teach the rest.
Intellectual competence must be related to fights/struggles of subordinate classes.

Ideology
Marx: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary their social existence determines their
consciousness”.
According to Marx, the ideas of the ruling classes are the dominant ideas, and these dominant ideas are the expression of the dominant
material relations. Those who control the means of production also control the means of mental production; subordinate classes cannot
disseminate alternative versions of political and social reality that could change the dominant ideas.
★ We cannot think freely, we think according to our position in society. Different positions think and perceive differently. If you
are XYZ, you think as XYZ.
★ Owner of the production (like the owner of the newspaper) owned the ideas that were spread.

According to Louis Althusser:

★ Ideology is the way in which human beings live their relations with the real conditions of existence.
★ Ideology operates not explicitly but implicitly and includes ideas, but also material activities (it is embedded in rituals,
institutions, and material practices).
★ Ideology is unconscious: we internalize it and it is difficult for us to be aware of its presence or its effects.
Althusser considered culture to be at least partially independent of the economic structure.
Ideology produces the relations of production. If we think a certain way, we produce things a certain way.
The Ideological State Apparatuses (family, school, media) reproduce a set of social relations, attitudes, and beliefs, a common sense
that supports and reinforces the dominant mode of economic production. They interpellate people and turn them into subjects, i.e.
they assign them a position that people freely accept (teacher, student). Recognize yourself as a certain person in a certain position.
Hegemony
For Gramsci, hegemony is the way in which dominant groups and social formations guide a society, thanks to a balance between force
and persuasion, which is achieved through intellectual and moral leadership.
According to Gramsci’s “The Intellectuals”:
“The intellectuals are the dominant group’s “deputies” exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and
political government.” And these are comprised of “spontaneous consent” and “The apparatus of state coercive
power”.
★ Gramsci’s position does not exclude the presence of conflictual situations; hegemony must be constantly renewed and defended
(because it encounters resistance). Not a static form of domination.
★ In neo-Gramscianism, popular culture is neither something imposed from above, nor something that emerges from below;
Rather, it is a battlefield, the site of confrontation between dominant groups and subordinate groups.
★ In cultural studies, conflict is interpreted as revolving around variables such as “race”, gender or sexual preferences (partial
recovery of the concept of hegemony).

In the CCCS perspective, the media are an important mechanism for the exercise of power because they shape the ideological
environment. But precisely because it is ideological, this activity generates constant resistance. Stuart Hall discusses how ideology has
become a site of struggle.
For Stuart Hall, the media construct or reinforce “common sense” through “reality effects”.
★ All culture is based on something that is taken for granted → common sense. This is a premise we don’t often think about.
Common sense is achieved through reality effects.
★ Reality effects is a confirmation of obviousness. It is a description of reality. True means credible.
★ Things are presented as truth, reality, and fact… but they usually aren’t.

Stuart Hall (1932-2014), develops “Encoding/Decoding Model” to study the communication process. It’s a means to study ideology,
both the imposed ideologies and the resistance to ideology. It focuses on the relationships between the process of production
and the process of reception of texts (meaning is constructed in these relationships).
***This is Eco’s Semiotic Model adapted by Hall.
★ Media texts are coded according to the dominant cultural order;
★ This coding suggests a certain interpretation;
★ The receivers adopt one of these three positions when they decode the text: preferred reading position, negotiated reading
position, oppositional reading position.
- Negotiated: What they do as they decode (text+reaction). Ex. “We have to go on strike.” “Yes, I agree, but I don;t
have to go, it’s not on me because I have 5 kids.” Agree with the general, and add an exception.
- Oppositional: I understand completely and I read it as an ideology. I translate into MY ideology. Ex. “It is the national
interest to limit wages.” “NO, IT’S YOUR CLASSES IDEOLOGY INTEREST, NOT MINE.”
Remember, ideology became a site for struggle.
Media Theory 9
Cultural Studies and Audience Studies
The journal Screen - Interest in the relationship between the meaning of the text and the formation of subjectivity.
*1970s - power of text, the reader can’t escape from the positions that the text constructs for the receiver.
⤷ Field studies and television studies.
In the UK, sociology didn’t exist in the 70s. So this was where cultural studies appeared.
Theoretical references (more or less all French structuralists): Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva (Bulgarian,
intellectually French), Christian Metz.
Screen Analysis - focuses on the relationship of text meaning and formation of subjectivity of readers. Build their readers in a certain
way. Produce their readings + readers.
Lacan (1901-1981): The subject is a product of language, of a symbolic order that pre-exists him. Our sense of self and others
deepens in language. Language is what allows us to think of ourself as a subject.
Foucault (1926-1984): Power is a force that produces reality and the subjects. Power doesn’t control reality, but it produces reality.
***Our discourses create the subject. Our discourse of ‘perversion’ creates the pervert. Our discourse of ‘criminality’ creates
the criminal. Our discourse of ‘madness’ creates the madman. Discourses of power give definitions to create reality +
subject/subjectivity.

For Screen authors, AUDIOVISUAL TEXTS produce subjects.

⤷ Analyst discovers, recognizes themself as subjects. The way you interpret the texts + its readings.
There are a series of “positions” that the texts create and make available to the receivers, and the analyst’s job is to discover them. The
act of reading is determined in two ways:
★ By the position of the subject inscribed in the structure of language (and of society);
★ By the re-inscription in the text of the subject position.
The text determines both its readings and its readers (textual determinism).

Laura Mulvey: “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema”, 1975

FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE: Hollywood movies produce two contradictory pleasures…

Scopophilia (voyeurism) Narcissistic identification

● Because of the darkness of the theater and the narrative ● Related to Lacan’s mirror stage: When a child first looks
conventions that give the illusion of looking into a into a mirror, he thinks it is another person. Then the
private world. REALISM. (*look at) child begins to recognize self + recognize himself as
different from the rest of the audience. More complete
image than the usual fragmented one.
● The cinematic experience produces a feeling of
omnipotence that derives from the identification with
the characters represented on the screen, who are
complete and perfect.
● Feel it, be a subject.
In Mulvey’s view, the (active) position of the observer is typically male while the passive position of the observed is typically female. This
makes voyeuristic pleasure and identification pleasure reconcilable in the filmic narrative.

[According to Mulvey] In mainstream Hollywood film, women functions simultaneously as erotic objects for the male audience who
can derive scopophilic pleasure from their presence, and as erotic objects for the male protagonists with whom the male audience can
identify. Camera angles and movements ––the third ‘looking party’ aside from the protagonist and the audience are crucial in realizing
the double pleasure of scopophilia and identification. They enable the male audience to look through the eyes of the male protagonist,
simultaneously to identify and objectify, or, in more straight-forward terms, to be him and look at her. Thus the conflict between what
Freud has called libido (scopophilia) and ego (identification) is resolved by the cinematic display of women as objects of the male gaze.

(Liesbet van Zoonen, Feminist Media Studies)

“To be him + look at her.” - camera angle is key
*CRITICISM → Lack of theorization of reception work. Absence of possibility of female. Lack of historical perspective (she says it has
always been this way in movies and always will). Univocal meaning, only one possible meaning. (accused of Textual
Determinism, powerful media: create subordinate positions for every subject, interpretation + formation of subjectivity.)
***Creating a male gaze, misogyny in cinema.

*Opposing: Audience Studies → objective: to explain why different segments of the public interpret media texts in different ways.
They already knew semiotics from textual analysis, but they wanted to know WHO follows the dominant/negotiated/opposing/etc. and
WHY.
Questions: Producers suggest preferred readings. Are audience members prioritizing the same? Do they make reference to absent
issues? Do they have the same agenda? Dominant encoding or oppositional? How are different interpretations related to age, class,
gender, ethnicity, etc.??? Hence, AUDIENCE STUDIES.
David Morley, The “Nationwide” Audience, 1980:
★ Twenty-nine groups representing different socio-cultural backgrounds were selected and asked to watch two episodes of the
programme.
★ Using the encoding/decoding model as a reference, a discussion was held to see if the cultural repertoires and codes used by
the different groups were the same as those used in the programme.
★ The research failed to identify a clear relationship between types of interpretation and variables such as class, gender, ethnicity
or age… his method was condemned.
BUT…
★ Morley’s conclusion: there is a continuum of “reading” positions, ranging from a dominant text position to a dominant
audience position. So, even though he was not able to understand which cultural rule divides people and makes the difference
in interpretation, but he did identify that the coding/decoding model is not adequate.

David Morley, Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic Leisure. (If you want to study TV, you have to study the family -
DOMESTIC MEDIUM - need context of family/household for proper study).
⤷ Discovers a close relationship between family television reception and the power structure within the same family. Ex.
Women
use TV in a different way - destructive, because for women, home = workspace. Men’s TV use - constructive, concentrated.
Ethnographic Method
The interest in the context of fruition prompted the adoption of an ethnographic method both within the tradition of Cultural Studies
and within the paradigm of uses and gratifications.
James Lull (name from Uses + Gratification Theory) - & the Ethnographic Method
★ Ethnography - Technique for writing/graphing cultures. Live within a distant people and write.
(Ethnography - Europe / Social anthropology - Anglo-Saxon).
★ Interpretive activity in which the researcher tries to grasp the meaning of the communication (verbal, non-verbal) through
in-depth interviews and other types of interviews; analyzing the perceptions, the common assumptions and the activity of the
social actors under analysis; audio/visual recording.
★ In ethnographic research on television viewership, the researcher must physically enter people’s homes and collect all
relevant information without disturbing the family’s behavior. Unlike traditional ethnography (dedicate their whole life to one
culture, stay for years, go back 20/30 yrs), the period of data collection is usually short, maybe a couple weeks.
★ Ex. First couple days, family stories, environment, etc. Recording family routines. MEDIA USAGE - whole point, duh :)
⤷ Didn’t consider private uses - CRITICISM?*** Or simply not the context needed for the focus?

James Lull, Inside Family Viewing. Ethnographic Research on Television’s Audiences, 1990 (within the paradigm of uses and
gratifications).

Two types of social uses of television…

Structural Relational (practical social arrangements)

● Environmental (background noise; companionship; ● Communication facilitation (experience illustration;

entertainment). common ground; conversational entrance; anxiety
 ● Regulative (punctuation of time and activity; talk reduction; agenda for talk, value clarification)
patterns) Ex. when family eats dinner, converse about ● Affiliation/avoidance (physical, verbal contact/neglect;
TV. family solidarity; family relaxant; conflict reduction;
relationship maintenance)
● Social learning (decision-making; behavior modeling;
problem solving; value transmission; legitimation;
information dissemination; substitute schooling) Ex.
learn things when watching TV (also consider what
parents have their kids watch)
● Competence /dominance (role enactment; role
reinforcement; substitute role portrayal; intellectual
validation; authority exercise; gatekeeping; argument
facilitation) Ex. dominance performance of controlling
TV access, or make kids watch content in line w/ views

Inside Family Viewing:

• Completes Katz’s work on the gratifications derived from media messages;
• Brings to the ethnographic field a tradition anchored to a psychological approach.
Media Theory 10
The Toronto School
Toronto School → major exponents: Harold A. Innis (1894 – 1952), Eric A. Havelock (1903 – 1988), H. Marshall McLuhan (1911 –
1980), Walter J. Ong (1912 – 2003), Derrick de Kerckhove (1944).
Innis - economist. McLuhan - English professor/scholar. (People who come from other fields with fresh ideas.)
★ Perspective is interesting because “the influence of the media is intrinsic to their technological nature”... not content.
★ Media are key elements in the development of economic, political and cultural processes. [the isolated form by technology???]

Harold Innis - media & POWER

Proposes a history of Western civilization based on the evolution of communication techniques.

Concept of bias: every technology has a bias in both meanings…

Deforming Influence Prejudice

● Media shape civilisations by emphasizing space or time, If the media have an influence on the shape of civilizations, they
giving privilege either to territorial extension or to the will also condition the systems of thought that develop within
duration in time of institutions. them.
● Light media: emphasize space; favored the birth of
● We can understand a civilization only by studying the
bureaucracy; can be easily transported and promote the
characteristics of its dominant media;
circulation of information over a wide area; they allow
● In order to do it correctly, we should free ourselves
control of the territory; time→identity. ex. papyrus
from the prejudice of our own culture, which is defined
vs.
by its own technologies and its own dominant media
● Heavy media: emphasize time; are more durable; favor
(but this is very difficult…)
the concentration of knowledge in a privileged class;
allow cultural control and institutional continuity; need The media bias makes it difficult to understand different cultures.
the resources. ex. stone/clay It is risky to apply concepts from one culture to another, there is
*Hard concepts to translate into today… TV is heavier with no such thing as an impartial POV. We must be aware of our
cultural control (national identity) and the internet gives more technological bias. Media defines our living environment,
control over the space, more fragmented? prejudice, the way we think directly.
*In every society/civilization, there is always a balance between
heavy and light media. For the existence of an empire, you need *(McLuhan’s quote about someone discovering water, couldn’t be
control over time and space. a fish. If you are surrounded by media, you can’t see your bias.)

McLuhan - media & CULTURE - the most famous of all the Toronto School members. (aphorisms, often quoted incorrectly; people
confused what he was, people called him a sociologist and he never actually touched that, and he hated philosophy). At times he was
incomprehensible, contradictory, paradoxic :). He hated popular culture and media, despite what others thought.
“The Mechanical Bride” (1951): essays on advertisement and mass culture in general.
★ Reference to Edgar Allan Poe Maelstrom metaphor: instead of remaining stuck to a way of thinking that was no longer attuned
to the times, McLuhan tried to understand the configurations behind what seemed to be chaos.
★ If you cling to the heavy, you go down fast. The narrator holds an empty barrel, which McLuhan equates with the importance of
keeping your head above water in changing the world. You have to avoid being swallowed by chaos because of the media
(advent of TV).
★ Solution: don’t hold onto something that will take you to the bottom. Stay agile. For his studies, instead of clinging to categories
no longer in style, he tried to look at what was in front and ahead and tried to understand. Looked at the effects of media
on culture through technology, not content. (content is the meat you give to the dog to distract)
Diptych on the effects of the media as a technological form: “Gutenberg galaxy” (1962) & “Understanding media” (1964)
Most famous aphorism: “The medium is the message.” (and the message is the human being) [anthropological meaning: media transforms
people in an anthropological way].
★ Doesn’t mean that content is not important. Just means that it is not the REAL IMPACT of media.
★ It also does not mean that the same message in different media means different things (TRUE, but obvious and not his point).
★ You have an impact on civilization because of technology. Technology shapes the way we think + feel.
★ Media creates the framework… remember the fish in the water.
Media are largely responsible:
★ for the fundamental characteristics of cultures.
★ for people’s worldviews and their psycho-perceptive attitude.
★ not because of the contents they disseminate, but as technological forms.
★ fractile: the whole is contained in the part; you open up a part and you have everything.
Clothes are an extension of the skin, bike extension of the feet, pointer extension of the finger, MEDIA ARE EXTENSIONS OF THE
HUMAN SENSES, AND THEY RESHAPE OUR SENSORIUM. [extend AND reshape]
★ Extends one sense and impacts another.
★ Plato talked about memory and wisdom. Does writing weaken our memory because you don’t remember externally? (ex.
cellphone extends our memory)
★ Extends one sense and amputates another. Restructures our senses. Restructures the balance. Our senses find another
equilibrium.
All media is an extension of our senses, but they don’t all have the same characteristics. “Media temperature”:

Hot Media Cool Media

● Low participation, excludes ● High participation, requires more interaction, includes

● High amount of information contained in the message; ● Low amount of information contained in the message;
high definition low definition
● Extends one sense in high definition ● Ex. Telephone is a cool medium, it is a common process
● Ex. Radio extends hearing; TV is hotter; video phone that depends on interaction; comics are also a cool
also requires less participation medium, there is space between and you must interact
to continue.

*Accused of technological determinism, says he’s not. What medium fits into what category can also change based on culture.

The distinction between cool and hot media also has a role in the history of civilization proposed by McLuhan:
★ Tribal stage, based on the coldness of oral/aural communication;
★ Detribalisation stage, determined by the establishment of a hot medium such as writing;
★ Retribalisation stage, ot the stage of the “global village”, another cold era that follows the spread of the electric media.

Shift from the mechanical age, characterized by the printing press, to the electronic age:
★ The hot media of the mechanical age favor professional specialization, logical-linear thinking, individualism, nationalism, and
rationalization of culture;
★ The cool media of the electronic age favor the return of integral, non-linear and simultaneous forms of knowledge, as well as
the emergence of a new kind of social community and new forms of tribalism.

The laws of media (tetrad)

★ What does the medium ENHANCE or intensify or make possible or accelerate?
★ If some aspect of a situation is enlarged or enhanced, simultaneously the old condition or un-enhanced situation is displaced
thereby. What is pushed aside or OBSOLESCED by the new ‘organ’?
★ What recurrence or RETRIEVAL of earlier actions and services is brought into play simultaneously by the new form? What
older, previously obsolesced ground is brought back and inheres in the new form?
★ When pushed to the limits of its potential, the new form will tend to reverse what had been its original characteristics. What is
the REVERSAL potential of the new form?