Media Theories

8 Key excerpts on "Media Theories"

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  Cultural Diversity and Global Media

  The Mediation of Difference

  • Eugenia Siapera(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Here, how-ever, we will assume a different perspective, which we hope does justice to the com-plexity of all the theories; this involves a classification of Media Theories on the basis of their level of analysis. Early theories focused on the individual, and empasized the socio-psychological effects of media consumption on people who were considered especillay vulnerable. These studies were concerned with the direct effects of the media on people, their behaviors and attitudes – the focus here was on the audiences and their responses to media stimuli (e.g. Katz and Lazarsfeld, 1955/2006). The difficulty of proving such direct effects led to shifts in perspective from the socio-psychological to the macro-sociological. Social theories of the media attempted to capture the wider influence of the media, and to place them in their particular political, social, and economic con-text. Two types of theories can be identified here: firstly, so-called medium theory, which viewed communication media as determining the world around them (McLuhan, 1964); secondly, political-economic studies, which viewed the media as part of a capitalist organization (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1947/1997; Herman and Chomsky, 1988). These studies looked at both the production and the contents of 5 Media Theories and Cultural Diversity Media Theories and Cultural Diversity 61 the media, highlighting the links between media ownership and capitalism, while also exposing the ways in which texts support dominant ideologies and understandings. The linear relationship posited by these theories was questioned by theorists who argued that communication media are already embedded in society and must not be considered as mere epiphenomena of capitalism. This gave rise to another shift towards a cultural model of communication, which viewed the media not as merely transmit-ting information but as part and parcel of rituals that create society (Carey, 1989).

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  Critical Media Analysis

  An Introduction for Media Professionals

  • Matteo Stocchetti, Karin Kukkonen(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

    (Publisher)

  Over time, the way we construct our reality through the social communication process changes. We develop different concepts, and our under- standing of the world is not the same any more. When we look back at earlier epochs with our present-day set of concepts, we understand the past in a differ- ent way than the past understood itself with its own set of concepts. By looking at media history, we will also see how the development of new media such as writing, printing or the digital media has influenced the way we communicate and therefore the way we conceptualise and construct the world. Media Theories are constellations of concepts, and they work as tools for our critical thinking. Different Media Theories identify different issues in the media, such as the issue of gender in gender theory, the issue of power relations be- tween media producers and media consumers in the uses and gratification ap- proach, the magic bullet theory or the two-step flow theory, or the issue of shap- ing consciousness through media technology in media ecology. 12 In the last chapter of this part, we will take you on a guided tour through differ- ent Media Theories, so that you can pick your own tools for critical thinking and understand how they work. 13 Chapter 1 What is “Critical” in Critical Media Analysis What awaits you: This chapter will explain what critical means and which critical skills you will learn in Critical Media Analysis.

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  Available until 27 Jan |Learn more

  Media of Reason

  A Theory of Rationality

  • Matthias Vogel, Darrell Arnold(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Columbia University Press

    (Publisher)

  WHAT ARE MEDIA?

  Hardly any concept has been circulated with such numerous and often dramatically underspecified meanings as that of media. While academic reference works1 have been rather hesitant to list the concept and have only recently begun to do so—with a largely semiotic understanding—in everyday language, as well as theoretical contexts, it is used in varied ways. In social theory contexts alone the collection of explications characterizing media yields an astoundingly heterogeneous composite. On the basis of his study of the concepts of the media theory of Parsons, Luhmann, and Habermas, Jan Künzler has compiled the following list:

  Languages, symbolic meaning, the definition of a situation, affect, intelligence, performance capacity, value-commitment, influence, power, money, law, truth, love, joy, art, belief, reputation, the formation of transcendental order, health, the formation of empirical order: all that is supposed to be media.2

  If one extends the study beyond the parameters of sociology and social theory, the compilation can be extended beyond nearly all limits. So in the area of so-called media studies, a discipline that has been struggling to specify its field of research since its emergence at the beginning of the 1960s and that has been searching for a conception of medium,3 heterogeneous concepts of media have arisen, above all as a result of diverse attempts to link up with the varied vocabularies of established disciplines. Such concepts show clear traces of the theoretical contexts to which they are closely related. One can clearly differentiate between the conceptual views from public relations, information theory, and communication sociology, but also literature and theater studies.4 Alongside, and at times transverse to, these media concepts, which are closely connected with the need to provide media studies with an orientation, there is also research that refers to individual “media” such as radio or film.5 It seems to me that this situation of media studies is characterized by two features: on the one hand, by discussions that—in light of the low degree of institutionalization of the young discipline, as well as the lack of specification of the discipline that may be responsible for this—threaten to prevent developments in a discipline that merely engages in confident reassertions of its ambiguous conceptualization; on the other hand, by a marked lack of sovereignty in dealing with media concepts that are not part of media theory in the narrow sense.6

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  Critique of Information

  • Scott Lash(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  $ Media Theory The Strong Programme in the sociology of science holds that for a theory to be valid it must be reflexive (Barnes et al., 1996). That is, it must be applic-able to itself. In Chapter 5 we just saw how reflexive and information-rich knowledge had as its unintended consequences an out-of-control object. This poses questions about theory itself. Does it not follow that theory itself would be an unruly object? Ideal-typical for such unruly objects in the con-temporary era is not industrial goods, but information and communication products. In other words, ideal-typical for such contingent circulating objects are, in a very important sense, media . It follows thus that social and cultural theory would increasingly take on the form of media theory . If critique can be no longer transcendental, but must be immanent to the information order, the critique of information becomes, increasingly, media theory. What follows, in a context in which both critique and reflection are in perhaps ter-minal decline, are some critical reflections on what such a media theory might be. Media Society, Media Theory What this chapter intends to do is explore the idea of ‘media theory’. This chapter will explore not the social theory of the media, nor cultural theory of the media, but media theory . What I will suggest below is that media theory is the paradigmatic form of thinking in today’s global information society. What I will suggest is that the media give the model, establish the paradigm for information in today’s world. More specifically, we will see below that the mass media of communication, which preceded the computer age by a great number of decades, already established a paradigm for the information age: a model that only has much more recently, with its mass pervasion through explicitly information technology, achieved hegemony. I want to suggest that in this sense the information society is just as much and perhaps more accurately labelled the ‘media society’.

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  Theorising Media and Practice

  • Birgit Bräuchler, John Postill, Birgit Bräuchler, John Postill(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Berghahn Books

    (Publisher)

  As John Tulloch (2000: 19–32) has argued, media research and theory needs to be more closely integrated with the wider social sciences (although this requires some rapprochement on their part as well!). This is much more produc-tive, I would add, than relying on the abstractions of philosophy or philo-sophically generated theories about media, whether in Scannell’s (1996) use of Heidegger’s philosophy of Being or the extensive use across media studies of Baudrillard’s polemics or Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptual explorations. 5 Media theory has no independent value as theory; it is only valuable when it helps us formulate better questions for empirical research. To flesh out how a theory of media-as-practice affects the priorities of media research, I want to discuss three consequences of an empha-sis on practice: anti-functionalism; openness to the variable and com-plex organisation of practice; and a concern to understand the princi-ples whereby, and the mechanisms through which, practices are ordered. At this general level, media theory is no different from any other area of social theory, although media’s role in representing the social world from which media are generated adds to the complexity of how their workings can be understood on a large scale. Media represent other practices and so have direct consequences for how those practices are defined and ordered. Beyond Functionalism I do not want to dwell long on this point, since I have covered it exten-sively elsewhere (Couldry 2005). Functionalism is so long dead in soci-ology and anthropology that it is embarrassing to find it alive and well in areas of media research. Functionalism is the idea that large regions of human activity (‘societies’, ‘cultures’ and so on) can best be under- 44 | Nick Couldry stood as if they were self-sufficient, complex, functioning systems.

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  A Companion to Media Studies

  • Angharad N. Valdivia(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  In another version of medium theory, appealing to social psychologists, educators, and propagandists, media with different sense-relationships have been compared in terms of their effectiveness for transmitting information with reference to their verbal, visual or aural characteristics. The empirical testing of propositions has produced little on which to base any theory in this vein. Thirdly, a less technological, more cultural, version of medium theory has proposed that different media have a “bias” for certain kinds of subject matter and for certain kinds of effect (e.g. being more or less emotional than rational/ logical). The “bias” of a medium is an outcome of sense characteristics, audience perceptions and attributed qualities. The selection and presentation of messages follows a certain “logic” which maximizes the supposed potential of the medium, but also selects out certain consequences as more likely than others. This branch of medium theory has, for instance, emphasized the bias of television towards emotional, personal, intimate and pseudo-interactive relation-ships between presenters/performers and audiences. In so far as the medium of television is defined in this way it affects the way in which would-be commun-icators, for instance journalists or politicians, shape their messages, with possible longer term effects on public ways of knowing, perceiving and relating to society. The notion of “media logic” as a shaper of news and information applies in such situations (Altheide and Snow, 1979). Nevertheless, existing “medium theory” as applied to mass communication is vitiated by the fact that all technologically-based media are hybrid compositions, in which technological, social, and cultural factors all play a part and cannot be separated out. Media with names such as print, film, radio, or television are arbitrary constructions, often sharing the same features of content or presentation.

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  Modern Rhetoric in Culture, Arts, and Media

  13 Essays

  • Joachim Knape, Alan L. Fortuna(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  19–22. 258 The Concept of Medium in Rhetoric his contribution to the collection of essays discussed above. 29 Many of those in the social sciences that have jumped on the media theory bandwagon have only served to amplify the confusion; their works are often much too superfi- cial, essayist, and rarely approach the topic with sufficient scientific and criti- cally methodical rigor. The disciplinary conception of medium that emerges from most German theories of media, influenced by both philosophy and science, has two signifi- cant weaknesses that are internally linked. On the one hand we see medium as a universal category that ultimately dissipates into a conception of matter and leads to a sort of monism. Definitions such as this – as stated above – have too little explanatory power. On the other hand, we regularly encounter the previously criticized media tautology as exemplified in the 1970 edition of Kursbuch, in which Hans Magnus Enzensberger ruthlessly criticized Marshall McLuhan. 30 McLuhan, the founder of modern media theory with his world famous books ‘The Gutenberg Galaxy’ (1962), ‘Understanding Media’ (1964) and ‘The Global Village’ (1989; with Bruce R. Powers), certainly understood how to finally catch and focus the attention of social and cultural scientists on the question of media. Unfortunately, he was not a very systematic thinker (to put it lightly): he had good ideas, but was unable to unify them within a consistent and robust master theory. Despite this, contemporary media theo- rists continue to work both implicitly and explicitly on developing the details of his inspiring theses and ideas.

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  Action Theory and Communication Research

  Recent Developments in Europe. (Mouton Textbook)

  • Karsten Renckstorf, Denis McQuail, Judith E. Rosenbaum, Gabi Schaap, Karsten Renckstorf, Denis McQuail, Judith E. Rosenbaum, Gabi Schaap(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Since then, a large number of studies has been published, for instance under the label of ‘Media Use as Social Action: A European Approach to Audience Studies’ (cf. Renckstorf, McQuail & Jan-kowski, 1996), and quite a number of studies are still underway or not even fully sketched out yet. Some of the studies published concentrated on theoretical (cf. Renckstorf & Wester, 1992; Renckstorf, 1996) and/or methodological issues (cf. Hendriks Vettehen, Renckstorf & Wester, 1996; Renckstorf & Wester, 1997; Hendriks Vettehen, 1998), whereas others focused on empirical findings (cf. Bosman & Renckstorf, 1996; Frissen, 52 Karsten Renckstorf and Fred Wester 1996; Mutsaers, 1996; Renckstorf & Hendriks Vettehen, 1996a, 1996b; Hendriks Vettehen, Hietbrink & Renckstorf, 1996). Twelve years later, time has come to reflect again on our research efforts up to now. That is, to assess anew theory and methodology of the approach, as well as the re-search evidence gained so far. Theory: Conceptualizing ‘media use’ as ‘social action’ At the core of an action theoretical perspective on human life one will find a concept of man as an action oriented being. Here, people engage in activity on the basis of their own objectives, intentions and interests; they are linked through a diversity of interactions, and are capable of reflecting on their own actions and interactions with others. During the course of everyday life people are confronted with a large number of material and immaterial events, other persons, objects, considerations and questions. They are able to act upon all of these ‘objects’ in the environment, of which the mass media and their messages are also a part. Such action, however, must be given form by the person himself.

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