Cultural Industries in the Digital Age: Some Provisional Conclusions

Jenkins talks about how the consumption of media products is a collective process, in other words, the collective intelligence is seen as an alternative source of media power. He describes how within popular culture, the collective meaning making is shaping and changing the ways religion, education, laws, politics, advertising and how the military operate (4). Jenkins discusses a process called “convergence of modes”, he explains that media and communication are becoming interconnected like the telephone and television.

In today’s society, media is a part of everyone’s lives, whether people want it to be or not. One of the most openly disliked components of the media is the thin, ideal, hour-glass figure that is

In the first chapter of The Rhetorical Power of Pop Culture by Deanna Sellnow, the author defines popular culture and explains the importance of studying the subject. Sellnow begins with a short explanation of ethics to convey that the influence popular culture has is not always used ethically. Secondly, Sellnow compares the different contexts of culture, elitist and diversity, to explain what popular culture is not. Popular culture is compiled of everyday things that influence people through subtle messages such as what is appropriate and inappropriate, good and bad, and so on.

The culture industry affects everything in today’s society. Adorno states, “The whole world is passed through the filter of the culture industry” (99). Everywhere people go, there are billboards, commercials, and advertisements that demand their attention. Before seeing a movie, one must sit through previews of other movies that may interest them, as the theater hopes that the moviegoer returns to watch another movie. In the culture industry, people no longer exist as individuals. They only exist as objects that increase the wealth of the big business owners that control this capitalistic society. Because no one contests the existence of the culture industry, the culture industry can continue to exist. About the film and radio industries, Adorno states, “They call themselves industries, and the published figures for their directors’ incomes quell any doubts about the social necessity of their finished products” (95). Creating unique and groundbreaking films in today’s world is considered “risky,” and filmmakers would rather create sequels to films that were successful in the box office. People excitedly consume these sequels and the directors make huge profits, thereby ensuring yet another sequel to be made. Adorno also points out that the film and radio

Media, one of the most influential reflections of culture, under represents women and displays them in stereotypical positions. Paula Lobo and Rosa Cabecinhas, Professors of Communication at University of Minho, highlight sex-discrimination within the media in

‘media’ through which thoughts, ideas, and feelings are represented in a culture” and argues that

Neil Postman was an athlete, student, teacher, philosopher, writer, and many more things. All these experiences give him a very unique outlook and world view. He prides himself on being a critic on culture and theorist of media. He began his professional teaching career at NYU where he founded their graduate program on media ecology. He remained a professor there until he died of lung cancer in 2003. Of the several works he wrote he is best known for Amusing ourselves to Death in which he analyzes today’s media culture and our obsession with TV media. This book arose from a panel he did discussing George Orwell, Nineteen Eight-Four and comparing it to our contemporary society. In the first three chapters of this book he touches on a variety of topics such as metaphors and media how they shape our world view and epistemology.

2. Croteau, D & Hoynes, W (2003). Media Society: Industries, Images and Audiences ((third edition) ed.). Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. pp. 305–307.

Throughout the years, popular culture has grown into an intellectually battle. Steven Johnson affirms that “the popuIar media steadily, but almost imperceptibly”, made “our minds sharper”. Johnson can be looked as an ideal example of the good impact the media has on its people. He doesn’t judge the negative advertisement, the numerous crimes presented on a daily basis or the violent television dramas but he explains how these are just a shell, a mantle and underneath it reveals a machinery meant to challenge and develop people’s mind.

Radio, television, film, and the other products of media culture provide materials out of which we forge our very identities; our sense of selfhood; our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality; and of "us" and "them." These products of media help shape our view of the world and our deepest values: what we consider good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil. They contribute to educating us how to behave and what to think, feel, believe, fear, and desire -- and what not too. The media teach us how to be men and women, how to dress,

North American mass culture is continuing to evolve, causing debate about the quality of media being exposed to the public. The debate of mass culture can be perceived in many different ways. Fiedler and Shils suggest that mass culture can be broken down into three categories; Refined, Brutal, and Mediocre. The “Refined” category focuses on excellence, the “Brutal” category focuses on vulgar subject matter, and the mediocre category focuses on both.(Shils 1978)(Fiedler 1957) The shift from Refined Culture to Brutal and Mediocre Culture can be seen as the beginning of a “Mass Culture.”

Nevertheless, it is true that the industry reacts depending on the steps taken by the audiences. The industry takes advantage of their power over both cultural personality and their receiving public; it takes control of the product and changes and re-changes it in regard of the different demands exerted by potential consumers and their reactions to these variations. In other words, as it has been argued, the movie business controlled its stars to obtain from them the biggest profit possible, and it continues doing so. Audiences and society play a game of two with the industry: none of them is anything without the other, then, cultural icons work perfectly in a capitalistic society as the American one. Social reactions trigger the creation of icons, which lately in response to this, are exploited by the industry, whose capitalization of the iconic figures perpetuates their presence in the cultural —and consumerist — sphere, prolonging connections and reactions on the side of audiences and consumers.

Nowadays, teenagers are living constantly surrounded by technology. Even if the younger generation may not see it, technology has had an impact on different factors. The widespread use of digital technology in the music industry has allowed consumers to reproduce digital versions of copyrighted songs inexpensively, with the help of many software and websites. There has been an increase in digital copying activities and those are most of the time claimed responsible for producers’ loss in revenues. While some people claim that the increase of digital technology has killed the music industry, in fact it has lead to innovation and new ways of consuming and sharing music, such as

In 1944, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, members of the Frankfurt School who fled from the Nazi Germany to the USA, were publishing their seminal essay ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’. Political critique, their thesis about the ideological domination of capitalism on cultural production is one that persists today and is regularly renewed (Mukerji & Schudson, 1991). Yet, since the first half of the twentieth century, evolutions have occurred within the ‘Culture Industry’, and while the theory – focusing primarily on the music and cinema industries – is still applicable to some features of contemporary ‘cultural industries’ (Hesmondhalgh, 2007), these changes require a contemporary reconsideration of it.

Media influence is the force by which ideas are injected into people’s lives shaping the very culture of society. This influence is masqueraded through hidden media message, resulting in a change in its audience which can be positive or negative, abrupt or gradual, short term or long term. Although mass media’s influential effect can reach a wide ranged audience as an agent of socialization the responsibility to contain what it releases has not been of importance. “The media’s socially significant obligations are formally ignored.” (A.S. Zapesotskii, 2011, p 9). Media messages can be exerted through many different outlets such as TV shows, music, movies, commercials, news, magazines, games which are all gravitated to entertain audiences ultimately offering personal gratification that can sometimes blur the lines between reality and