Media Representation and the Global Imagination

Shani Orgad

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780745643809, 9780745643793
• eBook ISBN: 9780745680859
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is a clear, systematic, original and lively account of how media representations shape the way we see our and others' lives in a global age. It provides in-depth analysis of a range of international media representations of disaster, war, conflict, migration and celebration.

The book explores how images, stories and voices, on television, the Internet, and in advertisements and newspapers, invite us to relocate to distant contexts, and to relate to people who are remote from our daily lives, by developing 'mediated intimacy' and focusing on the self. It also explores how these representations shape our self-narratives.

Orgad examines five sites of media representation – the other, the nation, possible lives, the world and the self. She argues that representations can and should contribute to fostering more ambivalence and complexity in how we think and feel about the world, our place in it and our relation to far-away others.

Media Representations and the Global Imagination will be of particular interest to students and scholars of media and cultural studies, as well as sociology, politics, international relations, development studies and migration studies.

1 Media Representation and the Global Imagination

A Framework

This book argues that in today’s global age, to understand media representation we have to include in our study two key concepts, namely, globalization and imagination.

Representation plays a central role in constituting and framing the experience of globalization, the symbolic stretching of social relations across time and distance. Concurrently, media representations increasingly are dependent on and determined by the networking of different social contexts and regions on a global scale. However, there has been little theoretical and empirical attention paid to the link between representation and globalization. Media representations have been studied and understood largely and sometimes exclusively in relation to national contexts. A central strand of research focuses on how the meanings of the texts and images that circulate in the media rely on, negotiate and/or reproduce national frameworks of understanding, memories, narratives, ideas, stereotypes and symbols. In that research, the significance of representations is theorized primarily in relation to national identity and culture. Another strand focuses on the significance of representations for other identity dimensions, such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, or in relation to units and communities of belonging beyond the nation, for instance, consumer culture, which is not bounded nationally. Nevertheless, many of these accounts suffer from ‘methodological nationalism’ (Beck, 2003): their analysis of the meanings of media texts and images is informed by an implicit assumption that the nation is the primary social and political form in the modern world. Even when the analysis draws on empirical examples from across the globe, it tends to privilege the nation-state and national identity in explaining their meanings.

However, in an age of accelerating globalization, driven by economic, political, cultural and technological forces, the national is no longer the only or necessarily the dominant context within which representations are produced, disseminated and consumed, and within which they acquire meaning. Globalization is transforming social interaction and communication in radical ways (Thompson, 1995). These transformations substantially shape and are shaped by representation – the process of producing meanings through the creation of symbolic forms and content. Thus, studying media representation demands that the analysis accounts for the complex nature and consequences of interactions and communication in the context of globalization. Chapter 1 seeks to establish the foundations for this project by bringing together and offering links between key debates and concepts in the field of media representation research and theories of globalization as a social process and a cultural phenomenon.

A second concept, which I would argue is vital for producing an analysis appropriate for understanding the work of media representation in the twenty-first century, is that of imagination. Drawing on Appadurai’s (1996) account of imagination as a key dimension in the experience of globalization, and on Taylor’s (2002) and Castoriadis’s (1987 [1975]) philosophical discussions of the concepts of imagination and the imaginary, imagination is offered here as a way to help address what are perhaps the most difficult questions for research on media representations (and media more generally), that is, how to understand the power of media representations, and where this power is located. While central approaches and traditions in the study of representation provide some compelling accounts that seek to address these questions, they concurrently produce some tensions and difficult problems, especially in relation to explanations of the power and impact of representations. The concept of imagination does not provide a ‘fix’ for these tensions; however, I argue that it can be instrumental in theorizing the power of media representations in today’s global age.

Thus, this chapter sets out to establish a conceptual triangle in which representation, globalization and imagination become the framework for the exploration in this book. The discussion begins with the object of this study, representation. Section I provides a ‘map’ of some of the central ways in which representation has been theorized and studied. The literature on representation is reviewed in light of three questions: what are media representations; what work do they do; and why do they matter? I am interested in particular in highlighting the relevance and value of existing accounts for exploring media representation in connection with globalization. Section II discusses some challenges and tensions in the field of media representation studies, specifically those that arise when existing theorizations seem insufficient to account for and offer tools to understand media representations in the current media environment. This critique forms the basis for the discussion in Section III, which introduces imagination as a concept that could help to address some of these challenges. In particular, the concept of global imagination is proposed as a framework to account for the work of media representations and inform their analysis. The theoretical discussion in this chapter informs the succeeding chapters and is intended to provoke broader critical thought on the subject of this book.

I Premises

This section provides an overview of some of the central ‘stories’ in research on media representations. It provides a selective map of some key accounts, organized around three questions, on which the discussion in the literature centres: (1) what are media representations? (2) what work do media representations do (what do they accomplish)? and (3) why do media representations matter? The answers to these questions vary and rest on diverse and conflicting epistemological, theoretical and analytical premises. The point is not to argue that one account is better or more ‘truthful’ than another, nor to suggest that we should somehow integrate all approaches and reconcile the tensions that are evoked by their juxtaposition. Rather, the purpose is to provide an account of the central ideas and claims that inform the research on media representations on which this book draws. I highlight the relevance and utility of certain well-established theories and concepts for exploring the ‘work’ of media representations in the contemporary global media environment, as well as pointing to some of their limits.

What are media representations?

Representations are images, descriptions, explanations and frames for understanding what the world is and why and how it works in particular ways (Hall, 1997). Of course, cultural representations have a long history and can be seen in the form of totemic objects created by religious societies as projections of their values and beliefs. In broad terms, any object, for example, a building, an item of clothing, an artefact, can be seen as a representation that carries meanings beyond its immediate function and use. What distinguishes media representations from these other representational objects is that their essence is to represent. In other words, their main function is to produce meaning, to capture in some way ‘reality’ in signs.

When we talk about media representations we are referring to texts (in the broad sense, which includes images) that circulate in the media space and carry symbolic content: news photographs and articles, advertisements, radio programmes, YouTube videos, blogs, Facebook pages, etc. ‘Representation’ refers to the process of re-presenting, the process by which members of a culture use systems of signs to produce meaning. This highlights that representation is an active process of meaning production, the products of which are media representations, that is, texts and images. The study of media representations brings together these two meanings: it centres on analysing representations as texts, by looking at their textual, auditory, visual and discursive properties, in order to establish a better understanding of the ‘work’ (Hall, 1997) that they do, that is, the process of producing meaning.

What ‘work’ do media representations do?

The process of meaning production through signs has been theorized in two main ways: the reflectionist (or mimetic) approach, and the constructionist (or constructivist) approach. Both approaches are underpinned by a radically different view of the relationship between the thing that is being represented – ‘reality’, and the act of representing it – or representation. Consequently, how they conceive the ‘work’ of media representations and their approach to how it should be studied and evaluated are also substantially different.

The reflectionist approach

Rooted in the Greek and Renaissance legacies, the key idea of the reflectionist approach is of mimesis, the notion that language (and by extension any medium of representation, e.g., photography) functions like a mirror that reflects true meaning as it already exists in the world (Hall, 1997: 24). The reflectionist approach assumes that reality is accessible through representation, thus the task of representation is adequately to reflect pre-existing meanings of ‘the real’.

This approach is epitomized by the notion of the historical truth value of photography: the idea of a photograph as ‘proof’ that something really happened, and belief, which runs deep in modern thinking, in the photograph as an inherently objective medium of representation. A notion of the media as reflecting reality is perpetuated in popular discourse, policy and political debate. The media themselves repeatedly endorse a reflectionist claim, as manifest, for example, in the title of the UK newspaper Daily Mirror, or in news outlets’ slogans that describe their commitment to current readers – providing ‘the whole picture’ (1986 Guardian campaign),¹ or ‘hunting down the news and beating the truth out of it’ (UK Channel 4’s 10 O’clock News campaign, February 2011). Media professionals, especially those working in the news, largely endorse the reflectionist view. Schlesinger (1987 [1978]) shows that news professionals have a deep-seated belief in their capacity to achieve impartiality and reflect the truth, a belief informed by the pluralist idea that one can present different points of view and achieve an accurate (reflective) representation of the range of voices and opinions in society.

The media landscape has changed dramatically since Schlesinger’s late 1970s study, and both media consumers and producers are increasingly aware of the problematic nature of the notion of representation as reflection. In particular, the ability to access representations originating from different sources and places (e.g., by watching reports of events on different national and international news channels and on the Internet) highlights the simple but fundamental point that representations never simply mirror reality (otherwise representations of the same happening would be identical). Nevertheless, a reflectionist belief remains central to the thinking, discourse and practice of news. For example, in 2006, following a report by the gay rights group, Stonewall, accusing the BBC of having a ‘derisive and demeaning’ attitude towards gay people and rarely referring to lesbians, the BBC responded (emphasis added): ‘We are committed to finding ways of reflecting the audience’s daily lives in our programmes’ (Brook, 28 February, 2006). Similarly, in a panel discussion on reporting of the 2008/9 Gaza War, journalists from Al Jazeera, BBC and the UK’s Channel 4, admitting the difficulties of achieving objectivity and balance in war reporting notwithstanding, unanimously reiterated a view of their objective as of ‘seeking the truth’.²

Much of the critique of media representations is similarly underpinned by the idea that the task of representation is to reflect reality. Various media monitoring projects (e.g., Global Media Monitoring, Media Monitoring Africa, Media Monitors Network) and research by national media regulatory bodies frequently are premised on the idea that the media should somehow mirror the society on which they report. They include criticisms along the lines that ‘mainstream media fail to reflect social diversity existing in the communities they serve and target’ (Media Diversity Institute, 2008: 2), ‘television … fails to accurately reflect the world in which young people live’ (Children Now, 2009), ‘television fails to reflect the multicultural nature of Britain’ (Sreberny, 1999). Similar rhetoric, predicated on the notion that the media’s role and responsibility is to reflect their society, is exploited repeatedly by politicians. For instance, in a letter criticizing the media in South Africa, the country’s President Jacob Zuma (2010; emphasis added) writes:

The starting point is that media owners and media practitioners cannot claim that this institution is totally snow white and without fault. They cannot claim that the media products we have in our country today, adequately reflect the lives and aspirations of all South Africans, especially the poor.

Can a guardian be a proper guardian when it does not reflect the society it claims to protect and represent?

In a world marked by the ‘stretching’ of time and space, in which information flows speedily across the continents, and in which knowledge of the world depends, often exclusively, on mediated symbolic content, the task of accurately reflecting reality becomes ever more fundamental. In the ‘liquid times’ (Bauman, 2007) in which we live, times characterized by uncertainty, the value of representation as a record of the truth which shows how things really are, is ever more crucial. Representation is a vital source of reassurance and a sense of certainty. But it is precisely the ‘liquidness’ of the global age that renders the reflectionist task of representation so challenging and problematic, if not impossible. In the global, highly competitive and porous media environment of the twenty-first century, representations can no longer be claimed to unproblematically reflect reality, since these representations are themselves a source of uncertainty, confusion and anxiety. This is perhaps most manifest in developments in digital photography and the increasingly accessible, affordable and easy-to-use image-altering software, both of which have substantially undermined the mimetic value of photographs. Cases of photos being manipulated and used as hoaxes are more frequent (memorable examples include National Geographic 2001 Photo of the Year of the ‘Helicopter Shark’, and the Reuters’ photo of a scene from the July 2006 Lebanon War where plumes of smoke were enhanced to exaggerate the destruction wrought by Israeli forces). Such manipulated representations, which can be spread swiftly across the world via the Internet, satellite channels and mobile media, not only question the credibility of photographic evidence, but also cast doubt on the notion of representation as reflection more broadly. Thus, while representations may be central resources that people draw on, and which endow a degree of certainty and reassurance in their lives, at the same time they are characterized increasingly by a lack of fixity, and constitute a source of liquidness, uncertainty and anxiety. This tension is developed in the chapters in this book, and reflected upon in the final chapter.

The constructionist approach

While the reflectionist approach continues to inform and underpin the study of media representations and debates over their function and role, at the same time the idea of representation mirroring reality is the subject of ongoing critique. The constructionist approach points to the naivety of the idea of representation as a mirror; any representation, it argues, is inherently and inevitably a construction, a selective and particular depiction of some elements of reality, which always generates some specific meanings and excludes others. This view is premised on the recognition that signification systems play a central part in producing meaning:

we give things meaning by how we represent them – the words we use about them, the stories we tell about them, the images of them we produce, the emotions we associate with them, the ways we classify and conceptualize them, the value we place on them. (Hall, 1997: 3, emphasis in original)

The notion that representation is an act of construction is rooted in several theoretical traditions which have been discussed extensively in the literature (Gillespie and Toynbee, 2006; Hall, 1997; Lacey, 2009; Macdonald, 2003) and which I do not propose to rehearse here. I would highlight, however, the contribution of semiotics, structuralism and post-structuralism for analysing media representations, with particular mind to their application in a global context.

Semiotics and structuralism

Semiotics is based largely on the work of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1974), who established that language is a system of signs. Saussure distinguishes between two elements of a sign: signifier and signified. The signifier refers to the word or image and is correlated to the signified, which refers to its mental concept. The signifier ‘triggers off’ the signified in our heads (Hall, 1997: 31). The relationship between these two elements is arbitrary; hence the same concept has different signifiers in different languages, that is, the same thing has different names in different languages. Furthermore, the relation between signifier and signified is not permanently fixed. Hall (1997: 32) gives the example of the word (signifier) black, which for centuries was associated with ‘everything that is dark, evil, forbidding, devilish, dangerous and sinful’. In the 1960s, in America, the popular slogan ‘Black is Beautiful’ changed the connotations of the word, and black has come to signify the attractive, ‘cool’ and desirable.

Saussure contends that the marking of difference within language is fundamental to the production of meaning. Signs do not convey a fixed meaning; their meaning is produced as the difference between one sign and another. Signs, Saussure (cited in Hall, 1997: 31) argues, ‘are members of a system and are defined in relation to other members of that system’. This aspect of representation seems even more salient in the contemporary global age where, primarily through media representations, we continuously encounter an ever-growing range of strangers, signified in text, image and sound as ‘others’, whose existence is constructed as in some way relevant to ours. The media continuously produce differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘here’ and ‘there’, through the act of representing. While Saussure was writing many years before the emergence of today’s intensely mediated global environment, his theorization of the crucial link between language and difference is central to the work of media representations in contemporary times.

Semiotics consolidated the recognition that meaning is not immanent in objects, people or things, but rather is produced by systems of signification – textual, visual and/or auditory. In this context, the work of the French semiotician Roland Barthes (1977) has been immensely influential, and particularly his distinction between denotation and connotation. Denotation refers to a simple, basic, mostly literal or descriptive level, where there is...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Media Representation and the Global Imagination: A Framework
• 2 Imagining Others: Representations of Natural Disasters
• 3 Imagining Ourselves: Representations of the Nation
• 4 Imagining Possible Lives: Representations of Migration
• 5 Imagining the World: Representations of New Year Celebrations
• 6 Imagining the Self
• 7 Conclusion: Nothing Gets You Closer Revisited
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index