Reading Media Theory

Thinkers, Approaches and Contexts

Brett Mills, David M. Barlow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317860471
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Scienze della comunicazione

What does the Frankfurt School have to say about the creative industries? Does the spread of Google prove we now live in an information society? How is Madonna an example of postmodernism? How new is new media? Does the power of Facebook mean we're all media makers now?

This groundbreaking volume – part reader, part textbook - helps you to engage thoroughly with some of the major voices that have come to define the landscape of theory in media studies, from the public sphere to postmodernism, from mass communication theory to media effects, from production to reception and beyond. But much more than this, by providing assistance and questions directly alongside the readings, it crucially helps you develop the skills necessary to become a critical, informed and analytical reader.

Each reading is supported on the facing page by author annotations which provide comments, dissect the arguments, explain key ideas and terminology, make references to other relevant material, and pose questions that emerge from the text.

Key features:

• Opening chapters: 'What is theory?' and 'What is reading?' bring alive the importance of both as key parts of media scholarship
• Pre-reading: substantial Introductory sections set each text and its author in context and show the relevance of the reading to contemporary culture
• Post-reading: Reflection sections summarise each reading's key points and suggests further areas to explore and think about
• 4 types of annotations help you engage with the reading – context, content, structure, and writing style …. as well as questions to provoke further thought
• Split into 4 sections – Reading theory, Key thinkers and schools, Approaches and Media Theory in context

New to the second edition:

• New chapters on New Media, and Audiences as Producers

Reading Media Theory will assist you in developing close-reading and analytic skills. It will also increase your ability to outline key theories and debates, assess different case studies critically, link theoretical approaches to a particular historical context, and to structure and present an argument. As such, it will be essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of media studies, cultural studies, communication studies, the sociology of the media, popular culture and other related subjects.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

 

 

 

This book has been produced to assist you if you are undertaking a degree in media studies or its related areas. Its primary purpose is to provide the opportunity for you to develop the knowledge and skills that are required to become a critical reader of media theory texts. In so doing, the book is also expected to fulfil two other related, but essentially secondary, purposes. The first is to develop your awareness and understanding of the origins, development and application of theory in the area of media studies. The second is to encourage you to use these newly acquired, or refined, abilities as a critical reader in ways that will enhance your written and oral communication skills. So, while the content of the book is about media theory, it is pedagogy – teaching and learning – that has driven the design.

The book was prompted by our own experience over a number of years of teaching undergraduate modules that incorporate elements of media theory. Whilst there is a surfeit of textbooks and readers that address media theory, a number of which we have used, we gradually formed the view that it would be helpful for our students – and for us – if this same subject matter could be approached and organised in a different way. The outcome is this book, which we believe is innovative because of its hybridity. This is because it combines elements of both the traditional textbook and reader collections and, thereby, avoids specific concerns that are voiced about each of these forms.

By including a wide variety of texts – or readings – on media theory, we overcome the common complaint that textbooks do not encourage students to read original texts, and even discourage them from doing so. Also, we have a different approach to that of the traditional reader collection. This is because we prepare students for the readings, intervene and comment during the readings using selected pedagogical devices, and then provide a post-reading refection. As a result, this should help you engage with what are often difficult texts to read and understand, in ways that are designed to empower you as a critical reader.

The book is organised into four parts. Part One includes two chapters which, in combination, provide a rationale for the book and contextualise the first part of its title, Reading Media Theory. The first chapter, ‘What is theory?’, explains the nature of theory, what its purpose is, how it works, and why theory is integral to media studies. The second chapter, ‘What is reading?’, explains the purpose of reading at university, how to overcome problems with reading, what we understand by critical reading, and generally how to approach the reading of theory and higher level media analysis. Parts Two, Three and Four explain the second half of the book's title, Thinkers, Approaches and Contexts.

Part Two, ‘Key thinkers and schools of thought’, comprises eight chapters, each of which is constructed around a text that is associated with a particular school of thought or thinker. For example, there are chapters on the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, C. Wright Mills, F.R. Leavis and the Frankfurt school. Lack of space precludes us from including all relevant schools of thought and thinkers. Therefore, our aim has been to include those whose contribution to theory and theoretical development is generally acknowledged as significant, even controversial, by scholars in media, communication and cultural studies. Moreover, our primary interest is in pedagogy rather than covering the ‘canon’.

Part Three, ‘Approaches to media theory’, includes nine chapters, each of which is built around a text that refects a particular approach to media theory. Examples include the effects on tradition, political economy, feminist media theory, cultural theory and postmodernism. As in Part One, decisions have been required about which approaches and which texts to include. Overall, we have opted for what appear to be the most widely used approaches, and endeavoured to construct each chapter around what are generally regarded as original, key or defining texts. We are aware that some of these approaches – and some of the authors of the selected texts – have moved in and out of fashion over the years.

Part Four, ‘Media theory in context’, comprises four chapters, each of which is based on a reading that relates to a particular context. The first three contexts encompass production (or institutions), texts (or content) and audiences (or reception). They have been described by one author as the traditional media studies ‘trinity’ (Devereux 2007: 3). The aim here is to illustrate how theoretical ideas have been utilised to inform the ways in which production, texts and audiences can be analysed, interpreted and portrayed. The final chapter in this section explores audiences as producers, and therefore problematises this ‘trinity’ somewhat; this is deliberate as many have argued that newer forms of media break down the conventional way of thinking about production, texts and audiences. In this and earlier parts of the book we cross-reference to other chapters where links emerge between thinkers, approaches and contexts.

All the chapters in Parts Two, Three and Four of the book are organised and structured similarly, in that they each comprise four main sections. The first provides an introduction to the school of thought, thinker, approach or context. The second sets out an introduction to the selected reading and its author(s). The third section is where we intervene in order to encourage close engagement with the selected text. We do this through the use of a pedagogic structure that enables us to comment on the reading, dissect the arguments, explain key ideas and terminology, make reference to other relevant material, and pose questions that emerge from the text. The fourth section comprises a refection on the reading which, where appropriate, points to its legacy or relevance in our contemporary media culture. Recommendations for further reading are provided at the end of each chapter in the form of three annotated references.

Whatever your level of study, this book will assist you in developing close-reading and analytic skills which you can then draw on for other areas of your course. It will also increase your ability to outline key theories and debates, assess different case studies critically, link theoretical approaches to a particular historical context, and to structure and present an argument – all of which are characteristics of a critical reader.

	PART I
	Reading theory

CHAPTER 2

What is theory?

DEFINING THEORY

Every week on Match of the Day (BBC2/1, 1964-) football pundits such as Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen pore over footage of that day's games and criticise and examine the ways in which the teams played. They argue over particular players and team formations; they look at slow-motion footage, and offer suggestions for how the team could have played better. In the end, the pundits rarely agree, even though they draw on their experience and knowledge to give evidence for their assertions. And, as the programme is weekly, they can refer back to arguments they have had previously, and, as viewers, over time we get a sense of what each particular pundit thinks is important, and what they are likely to argue.

The same is true for all sports commentators and pundits, and much television coverage of sport is taken up with such debate, analysis, supposition and prediction. In suggesting ways in which sportspeople could improve their game, such experts usually offer ideas which can never be proven or disproven; the game cannot be replayed in exactly the same way, to see if a different formation or set of tactics would have made a difference. Indeed, we spend much of our lives proposing suggestions, ideas and arguments which can never truly be tested. For example, our romantic relationships with other people are, at the outset, often predicated on guesswork. If there is someone you like, and you get to have a conversation with them, you might discuss in minute detail with your friends afterwards what was said, and what it might mean; from this, you might put together a plan for your next ‘move’. A programme like Sex and the City (HBO, 1998–2004) is all about people discussing and debating the meanings and motives of other people, and it is rare that any arguments put forward by any participant can ever be shown to be completely true or valid. In that sense, we spend much of our lives trying to make sense of the world around us and the motivations of other people, coming to conclusions based on evidence, guesswork, experience and the advice of others.

In other words, we spend much of our time theorizing the world around us. ‘Theory’ might be a word which we associate with universities and academia, and complicated writing which we find hard to make sense of, but the processes which produce theory are ones which are very everyday, normal and mundane. Theory can be thought of as nothing more than a way of thinking about the world. In media theory this process has quite specific purposes and ways of working, but this is only an extension of the kind of theorising which everyone engages in every day of their lives. In reading media theory, then, you should think of the material you encounter as a particular version of the process you go through whenever you discuss or debate anything with friends or colleagues, no matter what the subject is.

This idea that theory is a process is an important one. So far in your education much of the material you have encountered is likely to be pretty concrete; that is, it is factual, and you are required to learn it. It is less likely that you have encountered debates about the validity or appropriateness of what you have learned, and you are likely to have been assessed primarily on your ability to know certain things. At university level, however, it is likely that you are no longer dealing purely with factual information. Instead, universities are usually interested in introducing you to ideas and concepts over which there is much debate, and, in doing so, they encourage you to join in that debate. That is, you can become part of the process of discussion and deliberation, offering your own insights and responding to those of others. When engaging with theory, then, your role is not to read it in order to find out the ‘answer’; instead, your job is to make sense of what the author has argued, and respond to that argument. One of the reasons universities often structure their teaching around seminars and discussions is precisely so you can engage in that process with others, putting forward ideas and responses of your own and responding to those in the reading and those put forward by your peers.

Because theory is part of a process, it is often written differently from material you may have come across in your learning before. That is, as the intention of theory is to encourage debate, discussion, and analysis, it is often deliberately provocative, aiming to elicit responses in those who read it. Many people who write theory want others to look at the world differently from how it is currently seen, and, in order to do that, they have to question and critique the ‘normal’ ways of thinking about things. In that sense, theory often has quite a deliberate purpose, forcing readers to look at the world anew, and inviting responses which are engaged, informed, and help further the process of theory.

This definition might still seem quite vague, and this is appropriate. Indeed, if every discussion, debate, and analysis of everything in the world is theory, it is hard to see what does not count as theory. We can perhaps distinguish between theory as a process, and the results of that process. That is, encyclopaedias and dictionaries contain facts, which are generally accepted to be valid and true; they therefore rarely encourage discussion and debate, and the material they contain is the end result of research and discussion amongst experts. Theory, on the other hand, can be seen as the process which results in that information. Theory asks questions, and offers suggestions, and disagrees with proposals already put forward, in order to encourage movement towards agreed, accepted conclusions. Theorising about the world is the starting point in making sense of it, and one of the reasons why theory might be seen as ‘hard’ is because it has yet to come to conclusions, and so everything is up for discussion.

In order to make sense of what theory is, Williams (2003: 16) suggests there are three types:

1. academic;

2. practitioner;

3. common sense.

Of these, it is the first which you are most likely to encounter at university; academic theory is that proposed and discussed within universities and the wider academic community, and has a purpose of investigation and criticism in order to make sense of the world.

The second and third types are usually not categorised as ‘theory’, though Williams demonstrates that the process behind each is similar to that within academic theorising. So, practitioners (such as film directors, advertising executives, television scriptwriters, actors and musicians) spend much of their time discussing and debating their own working practices, in order to make better, more successful, more interesting, innovative texts, and they consistently reflect on their own processes and look at those of others. In do...