COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY THEORY

A flood of new communication technologies and their uses are changing the audience/media relationship in ways that can only be speculated on. The views of two foremost Media theorists: Harold Innis & Marshall McLuhan need to be forwarded here. The most central of their assumptions is that changes in communication technology inevitably produce profound changes in both culture and social order.

  

Harold Innis: Bias of Communication

In the 1950s, Harold Innis, a Canadian Political-Economist pointed out the possible linkages between communications media and the various forms of social structure found at certain points in history. He argued that in the early periods when the written word was dominant, empires expanded to the limits imposed by communication technology. Expansion did not depend as much on the skills of military generals as it did on the communication media used to disseminate orders from the capital city. It can be rightly stated that new communications media made possible the creation of empires.

Similarly, the structure of later social orders also depended on the media technology available at a certain point in time. For example, the invention of telephone and telegraph permitted conquerors to have more effective control over larger geographical areas.  Innis believed that newer forms of communication technology would make even greater centralization inevitable. He referred to this as the inherent ‘Bias of Communication’ .  The five bias that have been identified are:

*              Bias of Sense Experience:              Enable the experience of the world in more or less visual imagery.

*              Bias of Form & Representation:    With messages strongly coded (print) or essentially uncoded (photograph).

*              Bias of Message Content:               In terms of more or less realism or polysemy, more open or closed format.

*              Bias of Context of Use:                    Some media lending themselves to private/individualized reception , others

more collective and shared.

*              Bias of Relationship:                         Contrasting One-Way Relationship with Interactive Media.

He concluded that on account of these bias, the people and the resources of outlying regions that he called the periphery are inevitably exploited to serve the interests of elites at the center.

Marshall McLuhan: Medium is the Message and the Massage

Though Marshall McLuhan, another Canadian, borrowed freely from Innis’ Work, he didn’t dwell on issues of exploitation or centralized control. He was fascinated instead by the implications of Innis’ arguments concerning the transformative power of media technology. In his book “Understanding Media’ , published in 1964, he outlined his visions of the changes that were taking place as a result of the spread of radio and television. He proclaimed that the medium is the message and the massage. In other words, new forms of media transform (massage) our experience of ourselves and our society, and this influence is ultimately more important than the content that is transmitted in its specific message. He also argued that  the media were the extensions of man as they quite literally extend the sight, hearing, and touch through time and space. He envisioned that electronic media would open up new venues for mankind and will enable people to be everywhere, instantaneously. He suggested the term ‘Global Village’ , to refer to the new form of  social organization that would inevitably emerge as instantaneous, electronic media tying the entire world into one great social, political, and cultural system.

McLuhan’s observations concerning the Global Village and the role of electronic media in it continue to be prophetic. His theory is actually a collection of lots of intriguing ideas bound together by some common assumptions. He seemed ready to accept  whatever changes were dictated by and inherent in communications technology. He argued that  technology  inevitably causes specific changes in how people think, in how society is structured, and in the forms of culture that are created.

GLOBALIZATION THEORY

After the end of the Cold War, a new world order has begun to emerge. It is based on international capitalism and the unrestricted cross-border flow of capital and information. This flow is essential to the operational of multinational companies, but it also permits development of many other multinational organizations. Unlike the previous world order, the new order is being imposed through a quiet revolution that is widely referred to as globalization.

Globalization refers to the shift towards a more integrated and interdependent world economy. A fundamental shift is occurring in the world economy. National economies, which were relatively self contained entities and isolated from each other by barriers such as distance, time zone, language, culture, business system, and national differences in governmental regulations, are gradually moving towards cross-border trade and investment. The process through which this is occurring is commonly known as globalization.

In order to be competitive and to survive in the international arena, the national Mass Media must adopt similar strategies and become international. Mass Media have not only commercialized local cultures, but they have also internationalized  traditional and indigenous cultures in their efforts to become global businesses.

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Although globalization has many benefits, it is widely criticized. Small nations argue that their power is challenged and undermined by multinational corporations or by foreign media content that promotes alien norms and values. It is also charged that globalization undermines local cultures, which everywhere are said to be under siege by mass culture produced in Hollywood.

Benjamin R. Barber and Samuel Huntington (1995 & 1996), have argued that globalization of businesses had actually fueled the rise of traditional ethnic and cultural social movements. Critics like Morley and Robins (1995) had stated that mass media play an important role in creating and reinforcing national identities.  

CULTIVATION ANALYSIS THEORY

Cultivation:          A cultural process relating to coherent frameworks or knowledge and to underlying general concepts

cultivated by exposure to the total and organically related world of television rather than exposure to individual programs and selections. Cultivation occurs in two ways:  Mainstreaming and Resonance.

Mainstreaming:  The process, especially for heavy viewers, by which television’s symbols monopolize

and dominate other sources of information and ideas about the world. Here, the mainstream refers to a culturally dominant reality that is more closely aligned with television’s reality than with any objective reality.

                                Resonance:         When viewers see things on television that are congruent with their own everyday

realities, thus getting a double dose of cultivation, because what they see on the screen

resonates with their actual lives.

Developed by George Gerbner during the 1970s & 1980s, the Cultivation Theory addresses macroscopic questions about the media’s role in society. This theory representing a hybrid that combines aspects of both macroscopic and microscopic cultural theories, states that television cultivates or creates a world view, that although possibly inaccurate, becomes the reality simply because the people believe it to be so and base their judgments about their own everyday worlds on that reality.

Researchers have employed Cultivation Analysis to investigate the impact of television content on issues ranging from violence, crime, people’s perceptions of the justice system, fear of victimization, materialism, attitudes towards racism, affluence, divorce, working women, gender stereotyping, civil liberties, and so on.

George Gerbner had also identified the 3 Bs of Television. As per his statement, Television

1.             Blurs traditional distinctions of people’s views of their world

2.             Blends their realities into television’s cultural mainstream

3.             Bends that mainstream to the institutional interests of television and its sponsors.

GENDER AND MASS MEDIA THEORY

When the question of gender in relation to mass media is brought up, issues like under-representation of women in the media, stereotyping and sex-role socialization, and pornographic media content, are immediately visualized. Many feminist cultural researchers like Jacques Lacan, Nancy Chodorow, L. van Zoonen, Janice Radway, Linda Steiner, and Angela McRobbie, have focused especially on the role of gender in positioning the spectator in relation to film, television, & photographic images of male and female. They have also researched on the part played by the media in transmitting a patriarchal ideology concerning the place of women in society.

Nowadays, the question of gender touches almost every aspect of the media-cultural relationship. One concerns the fact that many media texts are deeply and persistently  gendered in the way they have been encoded, usually according to the view of the anticipated audience. Studies of media audiences and the reception of media content have shown that there are relatively large differences according to gender in the manner of use of media and the meanings attached to the activity. A good deal of the evidence can be accounted for by patterned differences in social roles, by the typical everyday experience and concerns of men and women, and by the way gender shapes the availability and use of time. It also relates to power roles within the family and the general nature of the relationships between women and male partners or of women in the wider family.

Different kinds of media content, their production, and their use are also associated with expressions of common identity based on gender, and with the different pleasures and meanings acquired. There may also be deep roots in psychological differences between male and female.

A gender-based approach also raises the question of whether media choice and interpretation can provide some lever of change or element of resistance for women in a social situation still generally structured by inequality. Differently gendered Media Culture, whatever the causes and forms taken, evokes different responses, and that difference of gender lead to alternative modes of taking meaning from media.

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POSTMODERN CULTURE AND MASS MEDIA THEORY

Mass Media can be regarded as one of the most powerful expressions of the ‘spirit’ of our age. Although there have been many achievements of science during the twentieth century, few touch our daily lives so frequently as the media. It is common to refer to this era of ours as ‘Postmodern’ in the literal sense that this period is the late stage of the ‘modern age’ characterized by unprecedented changes in our social systems, revolutionary industrialization, radical political upheavals, dramatic technological innovations, and dynamic improvements in economic conditions. As Morley had stated, the term ‘Postmodern’ implies a clear chronological and conceptual distinction from ‘Modernism’ . It refers more to the dominant ethos or spirit of the times and to certain aesthetic and cultural trends.

Postmodernism Theory implies that modern social order is not sustainable and will inevitably bring about their own destruction. As a social-cultural philosophy, postmodernism undermines the traditional notion of culture as something fixed and hierarchical. It favours forms of culture that are transient, of the moment, superficially pleasing and appealing to sense rather than reason. Postmodern Culture is volatile, illogical, kaleidoscopic, and hedonistic. Mass Media culture has the advantage of appealing to many senses as well as being associated with novelty and transience. Many features of popular media culture reflect postmodernist elements.

The idea of postmodernism has been easier to characterize in culture than in social terms, since the features of ‘modern’ society mentioned are still in evidence. As interpreted by Docherty, Postmodern Cultural and Social Philosophy is a response to the post 1968 reappraisal of revolutionary aspirations, which had, in their turn, been based on the premise of an end to capitalism and the birth of a new utopia. Postmodern stands for a retreat from political ideology, loss of faith in the gods or reason and science, thus shaping the contemporary Spirit of the Age under which people no longer share any fixed belief or commitment, and there is a tendency to hedonism, individualism, and living in the present moment.

As stated by Lyotard (1986), the cultural aesthetics of postmodernism involve a rejection of tradition, and a search for novelty, invention, momentary enjoyment, nostalgia, playfulness, and inconsistency.  The Postmodern ethos is much more favourable to commerce than were earlier cultural perspectives, since opposition to capitalism is undermined and commerce can be seen as responding to consumer wants or as actively promoting changes in fashion, styles, and products.

   

MEDIA CULTURAL THEORIES

CRITICAL CULTURAL THEORY

Neo-Marxist Theory

Neo-Marxist Theory is the contemporary incarnation of Marxist Theory focusing attention on the superstructure issues of ideology and culture rather than on the base. Many Neo-Marxists assume that useful change can begin with peaceful, ideological reforms rather than violent revolution in which working class seizes control of the means of production.

The Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School  refers to the group of Neo-Marxist Scholars like  Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, who worked together during the 1930s at the University of Frankfurt, Germany. The Frankfurt School combined Marxist critical theory with hermeneutics (the interpretation of religious and literary texts to identify their actual or real meaning. Its writings identified and promoted various forms of high culture such as symphony music, great literature, and art. Like most secular humanists, members of the Frankfurt School viewed high culture as something that had its own integrity, had inherent value, and could not be used by elites to enhance their personal power. Though high culture was extolled by the Frankfurt School, mass culture was denigrated. Horkheimer and Adorno were openly skeptical that high culture could or should be communicated through mass media.

The British Cultural Studies

The British Cultural Studies was one of the important schools of Neo-Marxist Theories that emerged in Great Britain during the 1960s. Pioneered at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham and led by

Stuart Hall,  the British Cultural Studies combines Neo-Marxist Theory with ideas and research methods derived from diverse sources including literary criticism, linguistics, anthropology, and history. This theory has attempted to trace historic elite domination over culture, to criticize the social consequences of this domination, and to demonstrate how it continues to be exercised over specific minority groups or subcultures.

The British Cultural Studies criticizes and contrasts elite notions of culture including high culture, with popular, everyday forms practiced by minorities. The superiority of all forms of elite culture including high culture is challenged and compared with useful, valuable forms of popular culture. The British Cultural Studies critique of high culture and ideology was an explicit rejection of what its proponents saw as alien forms of culture imposed on minorities. They defended indigeneous forms of popular culture as legitimate expressions of minority groups.

Inspired by a dominant early theorist Raymond Williams, a literary scholar who achieved notoriety with his reappraisals of cultural development in England, and building on ideas developed by Jurgen Habermas, Stuart Hall argued that mass media in liberal democracies can best be understood as a plural public form (the idea that media may provide a place where the power of dominant elites can be challenged), in which various forces struggle to shape popular notions about social reality. In this forum, new concepts of social reality are negotiated and new boundary lines between various social worlds are drawn.

Unlike traditional Marxists, Hall did not argue that elites can maintain complete control over this forum. In his view, elites don’t need that power to advance their interests. The culture expressed in this forum is not a mere superficial reflection of the superstructure but is instead a dynamic creation of opposing groups. Elites, however do retain many advantages in the struggle to define social reality. Counter-elite groups must work hard to overcome them. Hall acknowledged that heavy-handed efforts to promote alternative perspectives can succeed even against great odds. Nevertheless, the advantages enjoyed by elites enable them to retain a long term hold on power.

POPULAR CULTURE THEORY

It is assumed that ‘mass media’ are largely responsible for generating the ‘mass culture’ , which is regarded as the most widely disseminated, accepted, and enjoyed symbolic culture of the modern times abundantly available in the forms of movies, television shows/programs, newspaper contents, phonogram, videos, etc. The transmission of such contents cannot be stopped nor minimized. ‘Mass Culture’ will always remain in circulation and on account of its popularity will be enjoyed much and preferred by the mass audience. Popularity is a measure of a cultural form’s ability to satisfy  the desires of its customers. For a cultural commodity to become popular it must be able to meet the various interests of the people amongst whom it is popular as well as the interests of the producers. Popular Culture must be relevant and responsive to the mass audience’s needs or it will fail, and success in the market may be the best test to indicate the ‘popularity’ of that culture.

It can be concluded that Popular Culture is a hybrid product of numerous and never ending efforts for expression in a contemporary idiom aimed at reaching people and capturing a market, and an equally active demand by people for ‘meanings’ and ‘pleasures’ .

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The Cultural Text and its Meanings

Semiology or Semiotics is the science of signs, established by three scholars C.S. Peirce, C. K. Ogden, & I. A. Richards. One of the purposes of this field was to signification, the giving of meanings by  means of language. In human communication, we use signs to convey meanings about objects in the world of experience to others,who interpret the signs we use on the basis of sharing the same language or knowledge of the sign system we are using. Semiology has sought to explore the nature of the sign systems that go beyond the rules of grammar and syntax and regulate complex, latent and culturally dependent meanings of texts. 

As per J. Fiske,  the term ‘text’ should refer to the meaningful outcome of the encounter between content and reader. He states that a television programme becomes a ‘text’ at the moment of reading, that is, when its interaction with one of its many audiences activates some of the meanings/pleasures that it is capable of provoking. It follows from this same definition that the same television program can produce many different texts in the sense of accomplished meanings. Fiske tells us that a program is produced by the media industry, a text by its readers.

The application of semiology analysis opens the possibility of revealing more of the underlying meaning of a text, taken as a whole, than would be possible by simply following the grammatical rules of the language or consulting the dictionary meaning of separate words. It has the special advantage of being applicable to texts that involve more than one sign system and to signs such as visual images and sounds for which there is no established ‘grammar’ and no available dictionary.

A  text has its own immanent, intrinsic, more or less given and thus objective meaning apart from the overt intention of the sender or the selective interpretation of the receiver. This theory supplies us with an approach for helping to establish the ‘cultural meaning’ of media content. The same cultural content can be read in different ways by different members of the mass audience, even if a certain dominant meaning may seem to be built in.

COMMERCIALIZATION THEORY

Commercialization of Culture refers to the act of mass producing culture as a media content and then marketing it as a commodity to the mass audience. It also implies the competitive pursuit of large markets by the media. It is assumed that commercialization of media contents leads to decline in their quality. It can be thus concluded that “Popular Culture’ which is mass produced and successfully marketed to the mass audience by the media is a very good example of Commodification or Commercialization of Culture.

Media which are industries specializing in the production and distribution of cultural commodities have begun to develop subversive forms of mass culture capable of intruding into and disrupting everyday life culture. These new forms can function as very subtle but effective ideologies, leading people to misinterpret their experiences and then act against their own self interest. Media is capable of turning culture into a commodity with serious consequences. 

Some of the major negative consequences experienced through the Commodification of Culture can be cited as follows:

·                     When elements of everyday culture are selected for repackaging, only a very limited range is chosen and important elements are overlooked or consciously ignored.

·                     The repackaging process involves dramatization of those elements of culture that have been selected to make the commodity more attractive and appealing to the mass.

·                     The marketing of cultural commodity is done in a way that maximizes the likelihood that they will intrude into and ultimately disrupt everyday life.

·                     The elites who operate the cultural industries generally are ignorant of the consequences of their work.

·                     Disruptions of everyday life takes many forms – some are obviously linked to consumptions of especially deleterious content, but other forms of disruption are very subtle and occur over long time periods.

Advertising: The Ultimate Cultural Commodity

Advertising is viewed as the ultimate cultural commodity. Advertising packages promote messages so that they will be attended to and acted on by people who often have little interest in and no real need for most of the advertised products or services. Consumption of specific products is routinely portrayed as the best way to construct a worthwhile personal identity, have fun, make friends and influence people, or solve problems.

Compared with other forms of mass media content, advertising comes closest to fitting older Marxist notions of ideology. It is intended to encourage consumption that serves the interest of product manufacturers but may not be in the interest of individual consumers. Advertising is clearly designed to intrude into and disrupt routine buying habits and purchase decisions. It attempts to stimulate and reinforce consumption even if it might be detrimental to the long term health of the individuals.

 

HEMES OF MEDIA-CULTURAL THEORY

COMMODIFICATION OF CULTURE

It is assumed that mass media have converted culture into a commodity to be commercially marketed, thus eroding the cultural institutions. When culture is mass produced by taking bits and pieces of folk culture, weaving them together to create attractive mass culture content, and then distributed as a substitute for everyday forms of folk culture, with the objective of appealing to the mass audience, then it is in direct competition with the locally based cultures, which face disruption and erosion.

GLOBALIZATION OF CULTURE

It is argued that the traditional civilizations and nations are under growing pressure from various global processes which diminish the relevance of cultures. Among the forces of globalization we find economic globalization, regional integration, and the technological revolution in communications. Nonetheless, it is counterclaimed that we can expect culture to become more relevant as people seek identity in communities rather than in individualism. Scholars speak of a single global marketplace and its consequences for immigration and the elimination of borders and cultural differences.

Besides commodification of culture, mass media have also internationalized the culture. Such globalization can and will have drastic impact on the pre-existing cultural contents and forms. It may either lead to homogenization, diversification, or hybridization.

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY EFFECTS

The advancements that humans have been able to achieve in Communication Technology have gradually reduced the necessity of mediating cultural experience through personal interactions, religious ceremonies, public performances, or printed texts. Mediated cultural experience is now accessible to virtually all through mass media in a great variety of forms that can alter its meaning and salient features.

QUALITY OF CULTURE

When culture is commercialized and mass produced as a cheap commodity to appeal to the mass audience, then the quality of the culture will be definitely compromised, resulting in the deterioration of the traditional or folk cultures.

CULTURAL IDENTITY

Proper and correct communication between members of a culture is an essential component that grants cultural identity, but the variations in the languages and other means of communications used by the media industries have often resulted in the loss of cultural identity especially among the minor cultural groups. Typical and global mass culture produced and mediated by the media generates a new form of cultural identity thus disrupting the existing one.

POLICY FOR CULTURAL DIVERSITY

In order to minimize the impact of mass media on the traditional culture, more and more nations are formulating policies to secure the valued forms of cultural diversity. The media industries gradually realizing the gravity of the situation are trying to minimize the negative impact of the mass culture mediated by them.

SUBCULTURE AND GENDER

When there is the question of cultural identity, then the issues of the minorities must be taken into consideration, as they are the ones who are most venerable to the impact of mass culture produced and distributed by the media. Sub Cultures which are always regarded as minorities can be classified on the bases of location, ethnicity, religion, or gender. 

IDEOLOGY AND HEGEMONIC CULTURE

Ideology are the ideas present in a culture that mislead average people and encourage them to act against their own interests. A Hegemonic Culture is a culture imposed from above or outside that serves the interests of those in dominant social positions.

As clarified earlier, media industries create and foster forms of mass culture that structure everyday life. In some way or the other they use media to propagate a hegemonic culture and ideology as the means of maintaining their dominant position. The alternate forms of culture and innovative media uses are systematically suppressed in order to retain their economic power.