ARTS1090 - Summary Media, Culture And Everyday Life PDF

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A key summary of weeks including topics such as media rituals, mediation, media technologies, mobility and audience....

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ARTS1090 STUDY NOTES 1. Media & Everyday Life - Media Rituals “Media as ritual” by Nick Couldry Media & everyday life: idea that understanding media from the perspective of what people do with the media is better than researching what the media do to them. Medium (key concept): socially instituted technology involving physical means for establishing or transforming (cultural) relationships between individuals and groups. Mediation (key concept): meaning ‘middle’ & an active space… a space of organisation and transformation according to particular social values. Media: singular noun, symptomatic of treating the media as a monolithic single all powerful entity Ritualised action: repetitive patterns of behaviour and the aspects of culture they reinforce. Through celebrity culture, media rituals and ritualization connects with a wider social landscape. Media rituals: ➔ Any actions around key media related categories, whose performance reinforces and legitimates the value expressed in the idea that the media is our access point to our social centre (ie. media’s influence on the forms of contemporary social life). ➔ Actions that indicate a connection to something social => connects individuals to community, identity and values. ➔ Broad category of patterned actions related to the media. These include: ◆ Individual routines and practices of media users. ◆ The routines and practices within the media (e.g. reality tv formats, news broadcasts). ◆ The mediatisation of society’s rituals (“Media Events”) Couldry’s main argument: ❏ Media rituals are formalised, patterned actions relating to media that enact a particular way of organising the world. Ritual is above all patterned action. ❏ The term media rituals refers to the whole range of situations where media themselves 'stand in', for something wider, something linked to the fundamental organisational level on which we are or imagine ourselves to be connected as members of society. ❏ “Media rituals … are social forms that naturalise… media’s claim to offer privileged access to a common reality to which we must pay attention.” ❏ Focuses on explaining media's role in ordering our lives, and organising social space. ❏ Introduces the theory that the media has become the voice for the centre of

the social world: "the myth of the mediated centre".

2. Media and Public/Private Life - Domestication ‘The meaning of home in the context of digitalisation, mobilisation and mediatisation’ - Piel, C and Roser, J, 2013 Core concepts/definitions: ● ● ● ●

Domestication theory: new media technologies moving into the household & becoming part of everyday life 2-way process e.g. we domesticate the phone, and the phone domesticates us Ethnography: scientific description of a culture or group of people based on their customs, habits & mutual differences Ethnographers immerse themselves within the culture in order to study it Appropriation of media technology: purchasing the commodity, taking possession, making it yours, personalising/customize it Household as ‘moral economy’: values & morality that are established in the home and by one’s upbringing, family culture, customs, etc.

Main argument/ideas: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Media uses overlapping - old mediums co-exist with emerging media Media’s mobility: online/mobile media has created mobile networks rather than local places i.e. people’s homes aren’t the home of media anymore - media is on-the-go Private sphere vs public sphere: media has shifted into public sphere & is found in all sorts of cultural places/spaces Domestication: new media entering the home & becoming intertwined with people’s daily routines and home interactions Media triggering changes within the home e.g. changing family interactions/routines, rearrangement of media ensemble, bringing outside world into the home Aligned with moral economy of home - public media is made to reflect the hierarchy of values within the home e.g. who gets control of the TV remote Domestic mobilisation e.g. flexible use of laptops around home, creating new media spheres within house Urbanisation = rise of TV as a medium to transform homes Communicates the society around us in our private sphere Gives the public the right to know information, not confidential Home today = space of consumption & leisure

Scholar’s main points: ➢ Piel & Roser: “The domestication approach describes & analyses the process in which new media technologies move into the household & become part of everyday life” ➢ Silverstone, Hirsch & Morely (1992) & Livingstone (1992) developed 4 initial phases of the ‘domestication concept’: 1. Appropriation = purchasing commodity, taking possession 2. Objectification = displaying device, locating it within home 3. Incorporation = way in which device participates in daily routines 4. Conversion = how device becomes an active social agent in domestic relations ➢ Silverstone (1992):

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Media as a buffer from public life - shapes the public world to the values of the family home ● ‘technology does not come naked’ - it’s not just a tool, but a set of socio-technical relations between people, broadcasters & government ➢ Morley (2007): ● Challenges domestication theory by claiming the home is actually irrelevant as the key place for modern media use ● Believes mobile technologies are liberated from geographical constraints ● Suggests to extend the theory to outside the home ● Associates the home’s loss of significance with: - Digitisation: new media standards/facilities that help store, modify & distribute information e.g. introduction of mobiles - Mobilisation: technical advancements coinciding with changes in culture, society & everyday life - Mediatisation: media-related changes in communication that implicate new ways of making sense of the world i.e. social interactions are moulded by media communication

3. Researching Media/Mediation - Time Scannell, P “Dailiness” from Radio, TV and Modern Life · Mediation: Media in the middle – ‘active space of social negotiation’ · Media Time: Experience of time Is fundamental to how broadcasting has traditionally become sutured into structure of everyday life · Temporality: Different notions of time, our experience of time (objective/ subjective) · Temporality of media: - Way in which media subtly shapes our experience of time in everyday life - Fundamental to way in which they become part of our everyday life and our everyday routines and rituals · Dailiness: idea that broadcast media (TV/ Radio) gives us a sense of time of day, sense of time, structures our day à reflects in the programs - Synchronised experience connecting public - Dailiness structure if slowly fading away – almost every household owns a computer with access to the internet - New forms of media – able to structure the media to fit our lives/ schedule rather than being constrained - E.g. Netflix – revolves around our own personal time as opposed to Foxtel’s scheduled shows ❏ Place: an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies an indication of stability - geometrically bound entity ❏ Space: a social construction ❏ Non-place: a transient (only spend a short amount of time) place

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❏ Nonspace: a non-face-to-face space Objective time: Actual time (on a clock), institutional, linear, universal, independent of human existence, scientific • Subjective time: one’s personal perception of time, own experience, nonscientific, experiential, lived, ‘my time’

Scannell’s main argument · TV temporalities are closely aligned with the care structures of ‘the public’ and ‘publicness’ · Care structures: “care structure of the news are designed to routinize eventfulness, to produce it as an everyday phenomenon every day and thereby historicizing Dailiness” How have the temporal pressures of online news altered the traditional values and priorities of the newspaper? - Internet updates so frequently Live updates and increased updates on news, Higher frequencies decreases the value

4. Mediation - Space Readings - Hartley, J. “The FRequencies of Public Writing” - Moores, S. “The Doubling of Place” - Anderson - imagined Communities (recommended) Mediation ● Mediation: Media occupies a space between us and our world, an active space of social negotiation. ● Space: Space has an objective, scientific and abstract sense. Can be described as: Size, distance, proximity ● Media space: Study of media’s relation to space (especially in relation to new forms of media) ● Public events occur simultaneously in two different places: the place of the event itself and that in which it is watched and heard. Broadcasting mediates between these two sites ● “Live” witnessing that removes the “farness” ● Idea of space: Comes into existence when people interact with each other Anderson’s main argument:

● Even though people are scattered around countries of the world, they all connect to each other through national newspapers. People feel apart of a national community ● Shows parallels from Scannels argument which how was broadcast media gives us a sense of time and how it connects us as we have the shared experience of the content Moores main argument: ● “Public events now occur, simultaneously in two different places: the place of the event itself and that in which it is watched and heard. Broadcasting mediates between these two sites” ● The idea of “doubling of place” that takes place via broadcasting (e.g. radio and television, internet and mobile telephony) ● Being in two places at once through broadcasting media ● There can be plurality of place and space ● E.g. Princess Diana’s death (mass event that can come into private domain/ homes) Hartley’s main argument ● Argues that our participation of citizenship is shifting with changes in media ● Temporality and spatiality of new media creates different kind of publics Network mobility / Does it diminish the importance of place ● Public and private boundaries are crossing over - blur between the two ● Private becoming public → E.g. talking on the phone (private conversation) in public ● Communication no longer governed by rules of space → Communication achieved through two difference places Concept of place pluralised by electronic media: ● Potential pluralisation of relationships - raises issues to do with presentation of self or with performing identity in and across multiple social realities ● Electronic media - creation of virtual places in ‘Cyberspace’ or ‘text-based virtual realities’ (social media).

5. Understanding Media Technologies

The network society Core concepts/definitions:

Network: self-reconfigurable, complex systems of communication made up of interconnected nodes that absorb & process relevant info Processes ‘flows’ – streams of info circulating through channels of connection between nodes Nodes: components that build up network & help it perform, absorbing relevant info to contribute to whole network (can be devices e.g. iPhones – info travels between them) · Network society: society with structure built from networks powered by communication technologies i.e. digital era · Communication network: patterns of contact created by flow of messages between communicators through time & space · Space: material support of time-sharing social practices · Space of flows: technological practice of simultaneity, 2 places at once, time-sharing – places connected by technical communication networks through which flows of info circulate/interact, enabling a space for simultaneous ‘time-sharing’ · Timeless time: compression of time due to space of flows – rather than a structured sequence of timely events, media has collapsed time & info is always readily available · Media ecology: study of communication technologies as cultural environments, transformative power of tech e.g. how do text messages affect love? ·

Main argument/ideas: · Technology causes change to social structure · Historically, hierarchical structure ruled over flexible networks – networks were just an extension of the hierarchical source of social power Technological evolution of communication tech enabled networks to introduce new forms of social organisation – networks quickly became most efficient social organisation From broadcasting to networking – rise of tech New patterns of social organisation (autonomy/self-rule vs control) · Networks can either cooperate (communication between networks) or compete (outperform other networks by superior efficiency) 1. Flexibility – can adapt to changing environment 2. Scalability – can expand/shrink in size without disruption, no limits 3. Survivability – because they have no centre & can operate in various scenarios, they can resist attack on their nodes by reproducing & finding new ways to perform · Networks have layer of unity, whereas industrial societies were separated by culture, social class, etc.fnet · Maintains networked organisation at global level, whilst also personal to every society/individual · Boundaries between human/machine life are blurred – devices are an extension of our body parts · Media has enabled network society to become independent from hierarchical structure, creating more liberating social organisation – people can interact anywhere/anytime · The space of network societies is determined by: the places where activities are located (e.g. train), the material communication networks linking these activities (e.g. phone) & the content of flows of info that perform the activities functionally (e.g. phone call) -> this is space of flows

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Relationship with time is defined by our use of communication tech Compresses time, blurs sequence of past, present, future social practices Disorders sequence of events, makes them simultaneous (e.g. watching TV show whilst making phone call) Scholar’s main points: - Marshall McLuhan (1960’s): · “The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of the global village” · “The medium is the message” · “The world is a global village” · A medium is an extension of a natural human faculty e.g. radio is extension of our central nervous system · Content of a medium is always another medium e.g. newspaper encodes medium of printed word, which contains alphabet, which contains human thought, etc. · New media do not replace prior media, but modify them - Castell: · Big picture of ‘network society’ · Different nodes within networks are constantly immersed in the information flows · Argues the cultural values of the ‘hacker’ symbolises the culture of the network society

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Hacker’s have sense of self-autonomy which enables them to evade hierarchical social structures & share the info they desire

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In our digital age, we have similar self-autonomy as we choose which media to engage with

- Castells argues that we are now in a "network society", not the "information age". Information age implies that society is now built around information and communication technology but information has always been an essential source of power and productivity. Information age puts the emphasis on technology. Instead, the emphasis must be on social aspects, political empowerment and citizen participation through technology. Network society shifts the emphasis from technology onto social structures

6. Media Convergence Nightingale, V. "New Media Worlds? Challenges for Convergence" From Nightingale, V. and Dwyer, T. (Eds) New Media Worlds. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, pgs. 19-36. File ●

Convergence: a word that describes technological, industrial, cultural and social changes in the ways media circulates within our culture.

Digitisation and convergence: ● Digitisation and the media convergence process it produces are changing the shape and contours of the contemporary mediascape, with media becoming increasingly complex as a result.

This expansion and diversification has led: ● Degree of uncertainty about the future of traditional media and how they should be reshaped for a multi-platform digital environment. ● The emergence of new audience formation that challenge existing orderly system of media distribution ● New concerns about marketing online and its content ●

Mediascapes: provide large and complex repertoires of images, narratives and ethnoscapes to viewers throughout the world, in which the world of commodities and the worlds of news and politics are mixed.

The future of traditional media: ● Evans and Wurster (2000) - provide an account for the underlying reasons why the impact of digital media has been experienced as a disruptive by business and corporation, and not by others. ● They suggest that digitisation is leading to the separation of the information economy from the economy of things and the informational chain of value from the physical value chain. ● Embedded compromises - businesses are forced to making in defining the scope and scale of the operations. ● Once these compromises are exposed by digitisation a business is vulnerable to the disruptive process they describe as deconstruction/ disintermediation. Definitions: ● Bandwidth: amount of information that can be moved from sender to receiver in a given time. ● Deconstruction: the dismantling and reformulation of traditional business. ●

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Evens and Wurster refer to the newspaper industry of their explanation of deconstruction. Newspapers have had to adjust to the loss of income because classified advertising has been attacked by online competition. Classified advertising was once the prerogative of print and media but can now be published online more efficiently and at a less cost , to a wider audience. A result more people are accessing classified advertising online and the readership of newspapers is dropping.

Disintermediation: ● Traditional form: "new competitor attacks the established intermediary by offering greater reach and less richness" ● More radical form: when technology allows for the richness reach curve to be displaced, allowing or new players and less richness. ● The advertising industry exists to facilitate communication and interaction between manufacturers and general public. ● Its purpose is mediation, acting as a forgo between manufacturers and media industries. ● The internet permits manufacturers to create, cultivate and manage their own presentation

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and sales online, many companies decided to explore that they no longer needed to use traditional mass media. Advertising has thus faced and survived "disintermediation" in its radical form. In some cases media industries face a combination of disintermediation and deconstruction. E.g. tv industry. TV faces increased competition from additional TV platforms, many of its entertainment services compete for youth audience with richer and online providers. The shift away from their former dependence on TV by advertising and media agencies has resulted in massive increased in spending on internet advertising and a gradual reduction in spending on TV advertising and in the size of the audience for broadcast television. Fourntati (2005) describes convergence as a process of internalisation and mediation, where the internet is mediating itself and the traditional media are internetising. Describes convergence as process that both unifies media and yet promotes diversification.

Content - its use and misuse ● Internet issues are usually associated on the threats to copyright and privacy posed by peerto peer file sharing, stopping the distribution of unwnated SPAM and offensive material. ● In the online environment the protection of content online is generating increasing levels of surveillance and monitoring. Unlike the content classification and censorship of traditional media that is managed by state legislature, online surveillance is managed privately, by site owners and managers. ● The primary objective for internet entrepreneurs is to keep people active online as this is how advertising revenues accumulate. By using the internet people generate information that documents their online activity. They leave traces that provide commercially useful in...