As Bourdieu pointed out, “no cultural product exists by itself, i.e., outside the relations of interdependence which link it to other products” (Bourdieu, 1993: p. 32). These goods are also produced under specific conditions, not in a vacuum. This assumption is valid to art, literature, but also to journalism as a massive cultural production, like Bourdieu and other authors had demonstrated (Benson & Neveu, 2005; Benson, 2006; Bourdieu, 1994; English, 2015; Marlière, 1998; Murrell, 2015; Schultz, 2007). Thus, cultural products are entangled in a net knitted by different players, with diverse –even opposite- interests, forces, and strategies struggling to dominate what Bourdieu had called the field.
Bourdieu defines it as “a field of forces within which the agents occupy positions that statistically determine the positions they take with respect to the field, these positions-taking being aimed either at conserving or transforming the structure of relations of forces that is constitutive of the field… it is the site of actions and reactions performed by social agents endowed with permanent dispositions, partly acquired in their experience of these social fields” (Bourdieu, 2005: 30). So, the field is the space in which the actors, both individual and collective, deploy their forces, struggling to reform/preserve the rules of the game.
The concept of “field” allows inquiring the complex interplays between larger social and political structures and the schemes of human
Sociology is the study the different aspects of humanity and society. It encompasses a very broad and varying range of topics. It can be studied on a large world-wide scale spanning across several countries, which is called Macrosociology. It can also be studied on a small scale looking at only individual families or neighborhoods, which is called Microsociology. Not only does it peer into humans’ interactions with each other but examines why they act the way they do. It considers the environment, as well as how access to different luxuries can contribute to the people that we become. In this fascinating field there are three primary views on exactly what the fundamental driving force behind society is. Symbolic Interactionalism, the belief that symbols and the meaning that they are given, define how we will perceive life, in this philosophy these meanings are influenced by society and the events of individual lives. Functional Analysis, views society as any other organism, in this theory all parts of the whole must work together cohesively to function. Conflict theory takes a somewhat opposite view than Functionalism, this perspective suggests that rather than wanting to work in unison, society’s underlying motive is a power struggle for resources. Over the course of this paper the reader will explore these different perspectives.
Jenkins argues that American popular culture will be redefined by the struggles over convergence and media. With the idea of profit in mind,
Media sources in current culture are construed as important as they communicate the dominant ideology promoted by the bourgeois which the lower-class public should adhere to as the correct social norm (Kress, 1988). The medium which these ideologies are shown in are important, as different medium are used by different cultures. This essay will focus on comparing print with online media through analysing the Guardian and the Australian from August 31st. This will be done by looking at the types of news shown in each, the constraints and advantages of each medium, advertising, the concept of ownership, and the way the media convinces the public of their ideologies through hegemony.
I argue that authors and producers often attempt to impose their own set of cultural and political ideologies on its audience through a certain depiction of right and wrong. In this manner, works of fiction might influence, perhaps even alter, the ideologies of the audience.[3] Accordingly, analyzing the depiction of ideologies in media content can serve as a basis for further research on if and how producers intend to influence their audience.
Objective: To develop greater understanding of media genres, focused on types of “articles”, their conventions, and their role in political discourse.
In his work, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Theodor Adorno analyzes the nature of the culture industry. People everywhere are constantly being consumed by the culture industry, which is a term for the mass production of cultural goods such as films, magazines, and music. Adorno is concerned that the government uses the cultural industry as a way to deceive the masses and manipulate them into passivity. This idea remains true in today’s society. Young men and women are more interested in the release of the newest Taylor Swift or Adele song than political issues. People have become less intellectual as they are being consumed by the culture industry. It is much easier for a person to let himself be consumed by mass media and to let the media
In the text Adorno and Horkheimer primarily focuses on the issue of art such movies, radio program and etc becoming a commodity and the fusing of the market and art areas. The criticism of the culture industry stems from the fact that for Adorno and Horkheimer culture held the answer for liberation, however the mass produced culture that they found in America was instead enslaving people. Adorno and Horkheimer’s argument regarding mass culture produced products and its effects and commoditization of art remain important to contemporary society because these issues have continued to have a negative effect on contemporary society this can be observed by analyzing contemporary mass culture products such as television, movies and the internet.
“Media change does not necessarily result in equilibrium. It sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it is the other way around. We must be careful in praising or condemning because the future may hold surprises for us” (Postman 29). Media critic Neil Postman published those words in 1985 in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Yet, as we find ourselves in 2015, his insight seems written for today. In our age where society is still elusively trying to grasp and figure out what place new media and technology hold within our lives, and where debating the merits and flaws of an increasingly technological society seems to be a hot-button issue, Postman had already commented on such
“The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer is a pivotal article in history that changed the way in which many communications scholars viewed media. Both authors were members of the Frankfurt School, a school of thought which looked further into Karl Marx’s theories about capitalism and the issues of mass production. Published in 1944, Adorno and Horkheimer revealed their beliefs that the media, much like the economy, is becoming mass produced, and is therefore turning people in society into media-consuming robots. Industrialization created work lives for people in which they would work on only one part of a larger machine. As a result, they felt less involved in the completion of the project as a whole, and therefore felt less pride in their jobs and their lives in general. Instead, these people turned to media and pop culture so that they would feel more fulfillment within their lives. Adorno and Horkheimer believed that these people had a reduced capacity for original thought because media is now force feeding them the ideas of what they can think and feel. This essay will prove that although Adorno and Horkeimer’s points were justified through the eyes of authors George Lipsitz, Lev Manovich, and Susan J. Douglas, there are still exceptions to their theories that they do not account for.
In Hall’s encoding and decoding model he argues that encoding and decoding the meaning of media is not a single-sided process but one shared by both the producers and the audience. The producers encode their preferred meaning into the media using frameworks of knowledge, relations of production, and technical infrastructure (Hall, 1997). Frameworks of knowledge are the producers’ beliefs and what they assume about the audience’s beliefs. Relations of production are the needs of the financial side of the industry. Technical
In our society, there are many forms of mediated texts ranging from newspapers and magazines to films and television shows. Each of these media forms can be seen from different theoretical perspectives and analyzed to understand the different concepts that may influence them. Television shows are one of the most popular media texts with approximately 400 new shows airing each year (Ryan, 2016). However, it is often very unlikely for these television shows to strive as 65% are cancelled after their first season (Ocasio, 2012). This then, brings Marxist scholars into the picture as they are interested in how economic factors affect the production and distribution of media content (Mack & Ott, 2016). The Marxist theoretical perspective allows Marxist scholars to study television shows in order to understand why they were cancelled and how certain roles in the media lead to this.
According to Theodor W. Adorno in The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, the culture industry is the entertainment business. “The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry” (1113). While people are consuming products from the entertainment manufacturers “with alertness even when the customer is distraught,” real life is not becoming indistinguishable from the movies (1113). The majority of consumers are able to distinguish products from the entertainment manufacturers such as movies, TV shows, radio and books from reality.
Field is described as any a specific social structure that follows unequivocal rules that allow interactions from the habitus in a hierachrcial order (Bourdieu & Johnson, 1993, English & Bolton, 2016). English & Bolton (2016) further synthesize the rules and values presented in a field is centered to how power and influence are defined.
It is without a doubt that the Globalisation of the media has increased our access to information about people and events around the world. However, during the process it has also shifted issues on what should or should not be in the public domain due to media ownership led by Western media corporations. The media shape is reconstructing itself, forming a singular global body playing an essential part in our democracy socially, politically, economically and culturally. Due to this, the effects of globalisation towards Journalism have become very debatable to whether it is benefiting the practice of journalism or hindering it. During the course of this essay, it will explore the affect globalisation has on the media (especially journalism), the affect of media ownership and how new technologies have influenced journalism.
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.