MSTU 3000 Topics in Media Studies

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MSTU 3000Topics in Media Studies

• Dr Maureen Burns
• 33652710
• m.burns2_at_uq.edu.au
• Lecture 2

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Agenda for Today

• What are the media ? Brainstorm session
• Media characteristics
• Why study the media?
• Ways of studying media - partner session
• Frankfurt School - film excerpt, advertising
  images
• Communication Studies - McLuhan and Innis - class
  discussion
• Housekeeping
• Suggestions, comments and questions

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Brainstorm

• List as many media forms as you can
• (shouting permitted)

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Characteristics of Media (1)

• ? The media are human communication systems
• ? The media are processes of industrialised
  technology for producing messages
• ? The media generally aim to reach large
  audiences and hence have sometimes been referred
  to as mass media operating through mass
  production their success is often built on
  popularity
• ? The media usually aim to allow communication
  across distance (and/ortime)

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Characteristics of Media (2)

• The media are called media because they are
  literally in the middle, or are the middle chain,
  of this communication ... they are the mechanisms
  that connect the sender and receiver of messages
• The medias development has been affected by
  commercial interests that recognise that the
  media are potentially highly profitable
  industries.

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Partner Exercise

• Based on the list on the overhead, list ways that
  you might approach studying the media.
• What sorts of things would you focus on?
• Keep it broad for this exercise.
• Report back in about 5 minutes

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Agenda for Today

• What are the media ? Brainstorm session
• Media characteristics
• Why study the media?
• Ways of studying media - partner session
• Frankfurt School - film excerpt, advertising
  images
• Communication Studies - McLuhan and Innis - class
  discussion
• Housekeeping
• Suggestions, comments and questions

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Frankfurt School

• Connected with Institute of Social Research
• Originally in Frankfurt, Germany
• Included Adorno Horkheimer, Marcuse, Benjamin
• Had to flee Nazi Germany in 1933
• Ended up for awhile in New York, then California.
• Unable to return to Germany until 1953

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Excerpt from film made in 1934
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• On the one hand the growth of economic
  productivity furnishes the conditions for a world
  of greater justice on the other hand it allows
  the technical apparatus and the social groups
  which administer it a disproportionate
  superiority to the rest of the population. The
  individual is wholly devalued in relation to the
  economic powers, which at the same time press the
  control of society over nature to hitherto
  unexpected heights. Even though the individual
  disappears before the apparatus which he serves,
  that apparatus provides for him as never before.
  In an unjust state of life, the impotence and
  pliability of the masses grow with the
  quantitative increase in commodities. allowed
  them. (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1944 iv)

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Communication Studies

• For McLuhan, the medium, rather than its content,
  is the message
• What is important is the ways that each new
  medium disrupts tradition and reshapes social
  life

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Class Discussion

• A group The medium of television privatised
  public life
• B group The medium of televison publicised
  private life
• In small groups, then class discussion

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Housekeeping

• Lectures will usually be 1.5 hours
• DONT BE LATE. ITS RUDE. IT ANNOYS ME AND ALL
  OTHERS WHO BOTHER TO TURN UP ON TIME. WE ARE BUSY
  TOO.
• Lecture and tutorials ARE ON next week
• Im working on assessment criteria this Friday
  and over the weekend, and I hope to have them
  online asap
• Lecture notes are online now
• Everybody should have altered the title of
  Fionas lecture
• BE SURE YOU ARE ON SI-NET

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Comments

• Comments, suggestions, queries,
• Complaints - anyuthing from tutors

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• FIN