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Relationship Between The Media And Society
Relationship Between The Media And Society
Relationship Between The Media And Society
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WHAT ARE CULTURAL INDUSTRIES? Cultural industry as a concept had first been put forward by German critical theorists of the Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. While in exile from Nazi Germany in the 1940s, they wrote the Dialectic of Enlightenment through which they popularized the concept. In it, they wrote about the life in capitalist United States and felt it was rather meaningless and shallow. According to them, culture had become commodified in the capitalist societies, which was why they coined the term Culture Industry. The complexities which have arisen in society over time have metamorphosed the singular field spoken about by the two proponents and led to the creation of ‘cultural industries’. The different ways …show more content…
Firstly, cultural industries affect our views and knowledge about the world by creating and circulating different products. The media have a major contribution in this regard, not only through newspapers and broadcast news programmes but also through entertainment like films, television series and music. They help frame our views on what is right or wrong, determine how people live together in society, how far democratic functions are carried out and justice and rights upheld. These texts are disseminated by powerful corporations whose major motivation is to earn profits. Often theorists debate over whether cultural industries operate to carry out the interests of these elites in the society. Through cultural industries they try to accustom the common man towards a particular way of thinking which would eventually help serve their …show more content…
Diverse business and industrial houses that originally had interests limited in oil and financial services only, had now started investing more into the media industries. These industries primarily had private ownership. In the late 1980s a new form of cooperation emerged whereby there was cross –promotion and cross-selling between the different corporations so that there would an increase in the overall sales. With the developments in technologies new sources of cultural production emerged making the ownership more complex. In many of these industries such as radio, television and films, there was the emergence of oligopolistic ownership emerging which was leading to the creation of huge conglomerates. (pg195) In the USA, for instance, large corporations such as the RCA (Radio Corporation of America) became one of the leading companies overtaking the various media forms like publishing and newspaper companies and Hollywood studies emerged as an oligopoly which was integrated vertically. This vertical integration led to the development of certain new technologies such as recording and playback. There was also cross media ownership which made the system very complex. Film studios like MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) also held considerable interest in music industry. In the 1980s media houses began to invest more into consumer electronics companies. For instance,
“Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” is a chapter in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s book “Dialectic of Enlightenment” it goes onto discus the conflicts presented by the “culture industry.” Adorno states that the culture industry is a main phenomenon of late capitalism, encompassing all products from Hollywood films, to advertisements, and even extending to musical compositions. Adorno is very deliberate in noting the term “culture industry” over “mass culture” this was done to specifically distinguish, that it is not to be understood as something which spontaneously stems from the masses themselves.
Over the centuries, the media has played a significant role in the shaping of societies across the globe. This is especially true of developed nations where media access is readily available to the average citizen. The media has contributed to the creation of ideologies and ideals within a society. The media has such an effect on social life, that a simple as a news story has the power to shake a nation. Because of this, governments around the world have made it their duty to be active in the regulation and control of media access in their countries. The media however, has quickly become dominated by major mega companies who own numerous television, radio and movie companies both nationally and internationally. The aim of these companies is to generate revenue and in order to do this they create and air shows that cater to popular demand. In doing so, they sometimes compromise on the quality of their content. This is where public broadcasters come into perspective.
Cultural Studies focuses on the political and social impacts of media. Cultural Studies assumes that all cultural products are ultimately about power and possess value only to the degree that they attack established social order. Traditional Philosophy emphasizes the perennial difficulty of sustaining excellence in a culture seemi...
The issue of the relationship between the mass media and the popular culture has always been a controversial issue in social sciences. The political economists insist on the role of the media industry in the creation of this phenomenon of the twentieth century. Though, advocates such as John Fiske, argue that popular culture is actually the creation of the populous itself, and is independent of the capitalist production process of the communication sector. Basing his argument on the immense interpretive power of the people, Fiske believes that the audience is able to break all the indented meanings within a media message. He also believes- by giving new meanings to that specific message they can oppose the power block that is trying to impose its ideology to the public. Consequently, this anarchistic activity of the audience creates the popular culture as a defence mechanism. Even when we accept Fiske’s ideas, we can not disregard the manipulative power of the media and its effects on cultural and social life.
This chapter focuses on how the immediate social context shapes popular culture. This includes artists, animators, television writers/actors, and musicians (to name a few) who actually create popular culture and how the context of their work doesn’t always govern what they produce. Within popular culture, there are three realities to consider: the technological constraints, the organizational apparatus, and the legal system. With technological constraints, it deals with the production and manufacturing of popular culture. The organizational apparatus consists of the structure of which popular culture is promoted and sold. The legal system relates to how the whole process is regulated. Examples of the legal system can be seen with copyright laws and how they impact the content of music albums, which is why albums nowadays don’t have free samples of other songs. With the organizational apparatus, what the people receive is mostly a
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in Dialectics of Enlightenment. New York: Seabury Press, 1972: 120-167.
Adorno and Horkheimer (1975) used the expression ‘culture industry’ to describe the monopolisation of culture. “The entire practice of the culture industry transfers the profit motive naked onto cultural forms” (Adorno, 2001, P.99). Adorno and Horkheimer believed that Capitalism was mass-producing popular culture which was fuelling consumerist ideologies. It was demolishing the aesthetic values of art and art was no longer ‘arts for art’s sake’ and ‘purposelessness purposes’ prevailed (Held, 1980, P.93). Adorno (2001) argued that popular culture and art in capitalist societies were used for distraction and escapist purposes. The ‘Culture Industry’ was seen to assemble masses to participate in it’s ideology, which has profound social impacts. The monopolisation of culture exploits and manipulates mass population for social control and p...
It is increasingly clear that media and culture today are of central importance to the maintenance and reproduction of contemporary societies. Cultures expose society to different personalities, provide models, which display various forms of societal life and cultivate various ways to introduce people into dominant forms of thought and action. These are the types of activities integrate people into society and create our public sphere. Media and technology surround our society; engrained into the fabric of our existence so much so, that it has become hard to find an aspect of life not influenced by its effects. For this reason, media controllers, wield extreme power and influence over the lives of everyday people. Although, they increasingly continue to feed the audience trash, despite their authority as the creator of our social/cultural interactions, and justify their actions by calling themselves industries. Reducing themselves to just businesses whose sole purpose is to create a profit. This admittance of what they feel to be their true purpose however does not hinder their control and power but instead adds to it. Creating a need for there to be some way to analyze and discuss whether they are using their position and power wisely. Filling this void, scholars have theorized ways for individuals to be critical of the media that they intake. One of these critical theories is the “Culture Industry” theory. Using Cultural Theory, as well as other complementary neo Marxist theories, it is possible to determine how Stacy Peralta, once urban youth culture advocate, became incorporated into the superstructure through media use, thus making him a tool for the continued commoditization of society, and a youth marketer for industries l...
Living in a modern time, our lives can hardly be separated from creativity and culture. Creative industries have increasingly influenced our daily lives, not just the products we use, but also the money we make. According to DCMS (2014), creative industries in Britain are worth more than £70 billion to its economy every year, not to mention creative industries in other countries. In the following, the seven economic properties as stated in Caves (2000) will be applied to the creative industry, ‘New Media’. ‘New Media’ is one of the nine creative industries proposed in the UNCTAD’s
When people think about culture, we tend to think of art, literature. Possibly even the identity of a person through their language, common practices, rituals and traditions. According to Rivkin and Ryan (2004), culture is composed of domination and resistance (p. 1233). They also view subculture as having double connotation (p. 1259). In other words, culture and subculture has the power to rule over others or resist power and go against the flow respectively. In a capitalistic society, the ruling class has more power and resources over the working class. They generate their own ideas and values into the norm and are accepted by the working class/society. It works like a pyramid. Power is not distributed evenly to members in society. It is granted to individuals that are at the top of the pyramid. The further you are from the apex, the weaker you become. If we look at the structure of an organization or club, we know that the president has the authority to control, and below president are the vice president, then the secretary, then the treasure and so on. Anyone subsequent to the president has reduced power. People visually perceive media as a form of domination. Being owned by immensely colossal corporations, the media industry avails in the reproduction of the social system by permitting certain images and conceptions accessible to society (Rivkin and Ryan, 2004). While people are setting trends and norms, there are others that will resist to norms. This is known as subculture. It appears that subculture has developed through resistance of the standard styles of fashion and music which led to punk and goth in the 1970’s. “Subcultures represent 'noise': interference in the orderly sequence which leads from real events and phenom...
Rachel NisbetMAC 143 Critical Process PaperThe great thing about our society is that everyone thinks about culture differently, thereis a place for all types of media, interests, and cultures. Things that are popular to me might notbe popular to someone else. Culture values and ideals are spread throughout mass media tolarge populations through songs, television shows, newspapers, the internet, and other mediaoutlets. I would argue that the media products presented at the bottom half of the Skyscrapermodel give our society cultural value. To me the products at the top of the skyscraper givemore of a cultural value than the products at the bottom, but the products at the bottom arestill an important part of our culture. Just because they are
We have to admit that media is a central and essential part of modern life which brings huge impact on our ideology. At the same time, gender and media are connected in inextricable way; gender remains the foremost status of how we think about our identity, media creates tons of images of male and female and pass message about gender role today. However, what we saw in the media about gender recent decades year ago might not so relevant what we see today, because media has changed so was gender role. Like John Fiske’s audience power theory, I think popular culture is made and chosen by people, because our society creates and shapes popular culture; the characteristic of culture is continuous developing and it changing with attitude of society
Media is used by dominant powers to spread their ideological beliefs and to help maintain social control. Althusser (1971) explains that, as an ideological state apparatus, media doesn’t use pressure as a way to bind society together under one dominant ideology, but instead uses the will of the people to make them accept the dominant ideology. However, media is also used as a way for people to challenge the dominant ideology. Newspapers, for example, will have articles that openly criticise and oppose the dominant ideology for what it is, whilst at the same time providing perspectives and opinions on different ideologies (such as feminism) that society can believe in. Although these alternate ideological perspectives exist, they are usually overlooked and only ever reach small audiences. Ideology can also help us understand the media because of the way in which it distributes ideology. A lot of different types of media, such as film and TV; reflect different ideologies, though we are not always aware that they are doing so. An example of this would be action/adventure films, which shows that using force or violence to solve problems is acceptable and reflects upon certain ideologies. This helps us to understand the media because the ideology that is reflected in these films is capable of reaching big audiences through the use of TV and film, thus allowing for it to become a more common belief within
In general mass society ideas held a strong interest of social elites whose power was threatened by change. Media industries such as yellow journalism and penny press were criticizing the elites and system of capitalism. The media of that time was representative of a sick society that needed to go back to it old norms and values or to be force to go with a new system. In this time industrialist leader came up with favor of development of technology including mass media. According to their perspective advancement in technology would help them to expand the human productivity and generate new forms of material wealth. But it did not work like that and
...ing diversity, impeding real competition, forcing smaller players out of the market, and contributing to reinforce conservative views of the world, marginalizing dissent or content that does not generate profit or which is seen as challenging to capitalist values. Although the media industries are not exclusively American anymore, but are largely owned by various Western corporations (Japanese, German, British, American).