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Mass Media
Reading Summary 23.12.05
Todd Gitlin, "Prime Time Ideology:
The Hegemonic Process in Television Entertainment".

Television messages are integrated into the dominant system of discourse and the
prevailing structures of labor consumption and politics through the following features
of prime-time network programs:
1. Format and formula (program length, narrative curve of action)
2. Genre
3. Setting and character type
4. Topical slant
5. The solution imposed on the fictional problem

Introduction:
Hegemony:
 Ideology is relayed through various features of American television and television
programs register larger ideological structures and changes.
 Antonia Gramsci's (1970) notion of ideological hegemony: bourgeois domination
of the thought, the common sense, the life-ways and everyday assumptions of the
working class. Gramsci counterpoised "hegemony" to "coercion" as two distinct
process used by ruling class to secure consent of dominated. Called attention to
the routine structures of everyday thought which worked to sustain class
domination and tyranny.

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 In America, the working class is not only hostile to revolutionary strategy, it
seems to disdain the socialist goal as well.
 Adorno and Horkheimer argued that the dominant forms of commercial ("mass")
culture were crystallizations of authoritarian ideology, arguing that the "culture
industry" was not only meretricious but wholly and statically complete.
 Gitlin adds that in his opinion hegemony is the reason why are radical ideas are
suppressed in schools and why workers oppose socialism.
 Mass media criticism becomes mass-mediated, an auxiliary sideshow serving
cultural producers as well as the wider public of the cultural spectacle. Analyses
of the standard fare of mass culture run the risk of degenerating into high-toned
gossip.

Entertainment:
 Television in particular is the most 'pervasive and familiar of our cultural sites'.
How do formal devices of TV prime time programs encourage viewers to
experience themselves as anti-political, privately accumulating individuals?
 Commercial culture does not manufacture ideology; it relays and reproduces and
processes and packages and focuses ideology that is constantly arising both from
social elites and from active social groups and movements throughout the society.
 Others contend that upper reaches of political-economic system have 'relative
autonomy'. This paper on how below, cultural hegemony operates within a whole
social life-pattern.
 Hegemonic ideology is systematically preferred by certain features of TV
programs, and at the same time alternative and oppositional values are brought
into the cultural system, and domesticated into hegemonic forms, by the routine
working of the market. Hegemony is reasserted in different ways at different
times, by different logics.

Format and formula:

 The format of week-to-weekness or day-to-dayness. Where characters are
preserved intact for next week. For commercial and production reasons, the
regular schedule prefers the repeatable formula, and this is why ideological
hegemony is not reducible to the economic interests of elites.

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 The standard curve of narrative action stock characters encounter new version of
standard situation, plot thickens, allowing standard characters to show their
standard stuff, plot resolves. Over 22 or 50 mins, it is itself 'a source of rigidity
and forced regularity'.
 The usual programs are performances that rehearse social fixity; they express and
cement the obduracy of a social word impervious to substantial change. Elite
authority and consumer choice are affirmed this is one of the central operations
of the hegemonic liberal capitalist ideology. By organizing the 'free time' or
persons into end-to-end interchangeable units, broadcasting extends, and
harmonized with the industrialization of time.
 Leisure is industrialized, duration is homogenized, even excitement is routinized,
and the standard repeated TV format is an important component of the process.
 Home video recorders created to sell the means for private, commoditized
solutions to the time jam.
 Commercials have a good deal to do with shaping and maintaining markets. They
get us accustomed to thinking of ourselves and behaving as a market rather than as
a public, as consumers rather than citizens.
 Time and attention are not one's own, the established social powers have the
capacity to colonize consciousness, and unconsciousness, as they see fit.
 Perhaps the deepest, most powerful privatizing function of television is the most
obvious: we receive images in privacy of our living rooms, making public
discourse and response difficult.
 The hegemonic ideology is maintained in the Seventies by domesticating divisive
issues where in the Fifties it would have simply ignored them. These changes
resulted from commercial decisions; they were built on intelligent business
perceptions that an audience existed for situation comedies directly addressing
racism, sexism and the decomposition of conventional families. The partial break
with the established, static formulae of prime time television.
 Mini-series: The very format is testimony to the fact that history takes place as a
continuing process in which people grow up, have children die, that people
experience their lives within the domain of social institutions.

Shifts:
 An acceleration of the networks' competition or advertising dollars.

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 Networks' responses to the restiveness and boredom of the mass audience.
 Emergence of new potential audiences.

Genre:
 Genre is necessarily sensitive in its rough outlines if not in detail, to popular
moods and taste from moment to moment.
 Signs of this sensitivity to shifting moods and group identities in the audience:
Shows which portray: sturdy individualism, hedonistic values, law and order,
paternalistic law, anarcho-criminal barbarism, feminism, backlash against
feminism (Charlie's Angels), rise of a black middle class.
 Shifts in genre presuppose the changing mentality of critical masses of writers and
cultural producers. Changes in cultural ideas and in audience sensibilities must be
harmonized to make for shifts in genre or formula.

Sports:
 Professional sports inseparably intertwined with networks' development of sports
market. TV consistently framed to reproduce dominant American values.
 Announcers not only describe events, they interpret them. One technique is to give
bits of information in the form of 'stats'. This flatters those audience members who
already knew the fact. And makes the rest feel like they really know what's going
on in the world.
Out of control of social reality, you may flatter yourself that the substitute

world of sports is a corner of the world you can really grasp. Throughout
modern society, the availability of statistics is often mistaken for the
availability of knowledge and deep meaning.
 Another framing practice is the reduction of the sports experience to a sequence of
individual achievements. The indiscriminate commendation raises the premium on
personal competition, and at the same time undermines the meaning of personal
achievements.
 The network exalts statistics, personal competition, and expertise.
 Instant replay creates thrill of recreating the play, even second-guessing the
referee.

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 Commentators 'function as cheerleaders', revving up the crowd with 'razzle dazzle
rhetoric and reminding us how uniquely favoured we are by the spectacle'. By
watching the game we are taking part in sports history.
 In semi-public situations, audiences are more likely to see through the
trivialization and ignorance and in 'para-social interaction' to tell the announcers
ff. But in living room, announcers' framing probably penetrates farther into the
collective definition of the event.

Setting and character type:

 In the more primitive Fifties it was possible for a show to get by with one or two
simple sets per show. Advertising agencies contracted directly with production
companies to produce TV series, what they wanted was glamour and fun, a
showcase for commercials.
o "On the contrary it is the general policy of advertisers to glamorize their
products, the people who buy them, and the whole American social and
economic scene." (Barnouw)
 Beginning in 1960s, network took direct control of production away from
advertisers. It now became possible for independent production companies to get
somewhat distinct cultural forms. The near universality of television set
ownership creates possibility of a wider range of audiences, including minority
groups, working class and age-segmented audiences, than existed in the Fifties,
and makes it possible for a wider range of fictional characters.
 Changes in the organization of TV production, as well as new market pressures,
helped to change the prevalent settings and character types on television. But the
power of corporate ideology over character types remains strong and sets limits on
the permissible.
 Untapped markets (often composed of people who have alternative views of the
world) can only be brought in by unusual sorts of programming.
 The receptivity of enormous parts of the population is an important limiting factor
affecting what gets on TV. But also, network elites do not risk investing in regular
heroes who will challenge the core values of corporate capitalist society.
Slant:

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 A specific slant often pushes through, registering a certain position on a particular
public issue. When issues are politically charged or when there is overt social
conflict, programs capitalize on it.
 The usual slants fall into two categories, either (a) a legitimization of depoliticized
forms of deviance, usually ethnic or sexual; or (b) a delegitimation of the
dangerous, the violent, the out-of-bounds.
 Changes in content have in large part to be referred back to changes in social
values and sensibilities, particularly the values of writers, actors and other
practitioners: there is a large audience now that prefers acknowledging and
domesticating social problems directly rather than ignoring them.

Solution:
 However grave the problem posed, the episodes regularly end with 'the click of a
solution': an arrest, a defiant smile, and an I-told-you-so explanation. Fake world.
However deeply the problem is located within society, it will be solved among a
few persons, the heroes must attained a solution that leaves the rest of the society
untouched.
 There is also the ending where, driven to anger or bitterness by the evident
corruption, the rebels break loose only to bring the whole structure crashing
down on them. These popular films (eg. King Kong) appeal to a kind of populism
and rebelliousness, usually of a routine and vapid sort, but then close off the
possibilities of effective opposition. The rich get richer and the incoherent rebels
get brought or killed.
 The fact that the same film is subject to a variety of conflicting yet plausible
interpretations may suggest a crisis in hegemonic ideology. Commercial culture
succeeds with diverse interest groups, as well as with the baffled and ambivalent,
precisely by compounding ambiguous or even self-contradictory situations and
solutions.

The Hegemonic process in Liberal Capitalism:

 The mass-cultural system is not one-dimensional. Shows are made by guessing at
audience desires and tolerances. Since the show is bait, advertisers will put up
with and buy into a great many possible baits, as long as they seem likely to
attract a buying audience.

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 The news has a certain real interest in truth partial, superficial, occasion, and
celebrity-centered truth, but truth nevertheless.
 Outside the world, networks have no particular interest in truth as such, but they
remain sensitive to currents of interest in the population, including the insistence
of popular movements.
 Hegemonic system itself amplifies legitimated forms of opposition. In liberal
capitalism, hegemonic ideology develops by domesticating opposition, absorbing
it into forms compatible with the core ideological structure. The hegemonic
ideology changes in order to remain hegemonic, that is the nature of the dominant
ideology of liberal capitalism.
 Raymond Williams makes distinctions between two types of non-hegemonic
ideology:
1. alternative forms: presenting a distinct but supplementary and containable
view of the world.
2. oppositional forms: rarer and more tenuous within commercial culture,
intimating an authentically different social order.
 Williams makes distinction between:
1. residual forms: descending from declining social formations.
2. emergent forms: reflecting formations on the rise.

Summary:
 The hegemonic system is not definitive. It has to be continuously reproduced,
superimposed, continually negotiated and managed, in order to override the
alternative and occasionally, the oppositional forms. Major social conflicts are
transports into the cultural system, where the hegemonic process frames them into
compatibility with dominant systems of meaning. Alternative material is routinely
incorporated: brought into the body of cultural production.
 Hegemonic ideology is extremely complex, it is only by absorbing and
domesticating conflicting definitions of reality and demands on it, that remains
hegemonic.
 What permits hegemonic ideology to absorb and domesticate critique is not
something accidental to capitalist ideology, but rather its core. The hegemonic
ideology of liberal capitalist society is deeply and essentially conflicted in a
number of ways.

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 Daniel Bell points out that it urges people to work hard, but proposes that
real satisfaction is to be found in leisure.
 There is a tension between the affirmation of patriarchal authority and the
affirmation of individual worth and self-determination.
 "In the 20th century, the dominant ideology has shifted towards sanctifying
consumer satisfaction as the premium definition of 'the pursuit of happiness', in
this way justifying corporate domination of the economy."
 "What is hegemonic in consumer capitalist ideology is precisely the notion that
happiness, or liberty, or equality, or fraternity can be affirmed through the existing
private commodity forms, under the benign, protective eye of the national security
state."

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Mass Media
Reading Summary
Stuart Hall, Encoding, decoding
Summary:
Account of how messages are produced and disseminated. A four stage theory of
communication:
1) production
2) circulation
3) distribution / consumption
4) reproduction
Relative autonomy argues that messages are not open to any interpretation
whatsoever; each stage in the circuit limits possibilities in the next. Messages have a
'complex structure of dominance" because at any stage they are influenced by
institutional power relations. A message can only be received at a particular stage if it
is recognizable or appropriate. The communication circuit is also a circuit which
reproduces a pattern of domination because power relations at the point of production
and consumption are similar.
Circular model:
The process has connected practices, but each of the stages retains its distinctiveness
and has its own forms and conditions of existence. The value of the approach is that
while each stage is necessary in the circuit, no one moment can guarantee the next
moment. The moments of 'encoding' and 'decoding' are determinate moments.
Message form:
The event must become a 'story' before it can become a communicative event. The
message form is the necessary form of appearance of the event in its passage from
source to receiver. The 'message form' is the determinate moment, but it must be
integrated into the entire process it is only a part of the whole.
Institutional structures:
Institutional structures of broadcasting are required to produce a programme.
Production process is framed by meanings and ideas: technical skills, professional
ideologies, definitions and assumptions, assumptions about the audience. Also, it is
not a closed system: they draw topics, treatments, events, images of the audience,
from other sources within the wider socio-cultural and political structure. Philip
Elliott: the audience is both the 'source' and the 'receiver' of the television message.
Production and reception are differentiated moments within the entire communicative
process.
Decoding:
There are discursive rules of language which institutional-societal relations must use
for its product to be 'realized'. Before the message can have an 'effect', satisfy a 'need'
or be put to a 'use', it must first be meaningfully decoded. In a 'determinate' moment
the structure employs a code and yields a 'message': at another determinate moment
the 'message' issues into the structure of social practices though its decoding. Effects
are framed by structures of understanding, and are produced by social and economic
relations. The more similar the positions of the 'personifications', encoder-producer
and decoder-receiver the more successful the communicative exchange. The degree

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of 'understanding' or 'misunderstanding' depends on the degree of symmetry or
asymmetry (relations of equivalence) between them. Lack of equivalence between the
two sides of communicative exchange can lead to misunderstanding.
Codes:
The televisual sign is made up of two types of discourse: visual and aural. Reality is
mediated by and through language. There is no intelligible discourse without the
operation of a code. Certain codes are so widespread in a specific language
community or culture, that they appear to be naturally given; these codes have been
profoundly naturalized. Naturalism and realism is the result of the apparent closeness
between the representation of the thing or concept represented. Naturalized codes
demonstrate the degree of habituation produced when there is an achieved
equivalence between the encoding and decoding sides of an exchange of meanings.
Arbitrary:
Arbitrary signs (visual or verbal) are the product of convention, not nature. The
conventionalism of discourses requires the intervention and support of codes.
Iconic:
Iconic signs look like objects in the real world because they reproduce the conditions
(codes) of perception in the viewer. Iconic signs are vulnerable to being seen as
natural because they are widely distributed and because it is less arbitrary than a
linguistic sign. The linguistic sign, 'cow' has none of the properties of the thing
represented, whereas the visual sign has some.
Denotation and Connotation:
Denotation is widely equated with the literal meaning of a sign, a 'natural sign' which
is produced without the intervention of a code. Connotation is employed to refer more
changeable, associative meanings which vary from instance to instance and depend on
the intervention of codes. It is at the connotative level of the sign that situational
ideologies alter and transform signification, because the fluidity of meaning and
association can be more fully exploited and transformed at this level. The terms
denotation and connotation are useful analytic tools for distinguishing between the
different levels at which ideologies and discourses intersect, not the presence/absence
of ideologies. The level of connotation of the visual sign is the point where already
coded signs intersect with the deep semantic codes of a culture
and take on additional, more active ideological dimensions.
Maps of meanings
Codes refer signs to maps of meanings into which any culture is classified. Maps of
social reality have the whole range of social meanings, practices, usages, power and
interest 'written in' to them. Barthes: the connotative levels of signifiers are
"fragments of ideology".
Polysemy:
The connotative level is subject to more active transformations, which exploit its
polysemic values. Polysemy is the coexistence of many possible meanings of a word
or phrase. It should not be confused with pluralism. Connotative codes are not equal
amongst themselves; they constitute a dominant cultural order. It is always possible to
order, classify, assign and decode an event without more than one mapping. We say

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dominant because there is a pattern of preferred readings, and these have the
institutional/political/ideological order imprinted on them, and have themselves
become institutionalized.
Misunderstanding:
Misunderstanding at the connotative level occurs through the codes of social life,
economic and political power. Performative rules are rules of competence and use,
which seek actively to enforce or prefer one semantic domain over another and rule
items into and out of their appropriate meaning-sets.
Dominant meanings:
The decoding of an event within the limit of dominant definitions in which it was
been connotatively signified. The problem here is over subjective capacity, because
the television practice continuously rearranges, delimits and prescribes into our
awareness which items are arranged. When broadcasters are concerned that the
audience has failed to understand the meaning as they intended, what they mean is
that the viewers are not operating within the dominant or preferred code. Encoding
has the effect of constructing some of the limits and parameters within which the
decoding can occur. The correspondence between encoding and decoding moments is
constructed not given.
Three hypothetical positions from which decoding of a televisual discourse may
be constructed:
1. Dominant-hegemonic position: Where the viewer operates inside the dominant
code and takes the connoted meaning full and straight and decodes the message in
terms of the reference code in which it has been encoded. The professional code is
the position which the professional broadcasters assume when encoding a message
which has already been signified in a hegemonic manner. The professional code
operates within the hegemony of the dominant code. Professional codes serve to
reproduce hegemonic definitions by not overtly biasing their operations in a
dominant direction, it is done inadvertently.
2. Negotiated code: Where the viewer acknowledges the legitimacy of the
hegemonic definitions on an abstract level, but at a more restricted, situational
level it does not abide by all the rules.
3. Oppositional code: This is to decode the message in a globally contrary way.

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Mass Media
Reading Summary
Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton, Mass Communication, Popular Taste,
and Organized Social Action

Introduction:
 The 'chief social effect' of mass media is to prevent change, 'to enforce the status
quo and keep change from happening. Central thesis: the mass communication
system is integrated into business establishment, and therefore enforces existing
norms and values.
 Mass propaganda can be effective when:
1. Monopoly control
2. Canalizing existing viewpoints
3. Personal communication

Social Concern with the Mass Media:

Propaganda:
 Fear of the potential power and ubiquity of mass media. It is seen as a powerful
instrument which can be used for propaganda.
Manipulation by businesses:
 Increasingly, there is manipulation by chief power groups including businesses, in
place of more direct means of control. It involves a subtler type of exploitation.
'Reduced direct exploitation', increased 'psychological exploitation'.
 The control of opinions and beliefs in society is done through mass persuasion,
intimidation, coercion. Media has taken on job of 'rendering mass publics
confirmative to the social and economic status quo'.
 'Concern with the present effects of the mass media upon their enormous
audiences' leads to the 'unconditional surrender of critical faculties'.
Influence on popular culture:
 Danger that mass media has led to 'the deterioration of aesthetic tastes and popular
cultural standards.'

To set up study:

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1.

Inquire into what we know about the effects of the existence of mass
media in our society.

2.

Look into effects of the particular structure of ownership and operation of

mass media in this country.

3.

Consider the effects of the particular contents disseminated through the

mass media.

The Social Role of the Machinery of Mass Media:

 Mass media can 'reach enormous audiences'.
 Psychological basis for concern which stems from a socio-historical context.
Social changes have led to people having a better quality of life, working less, free
education, more leisure time, but people do not enjoy this time, they are addicted
to media. 'These mass media seem somehow to have cheated reformers of the
fruits of their victories'. There is a sense of betrayal.

Some Social Functions of the Mass Media:

 There are diverse effects of the mass media under varying systems of control and
ownership. Media serve many social functions, including:
1. The status-conferral function
2. The enforcement of social norms
3. The narcotizing dysfunction

1. The status-conferral function:

 The mass media confer status on public issues, persons, organizations and social
movements. The mass media enhances authority of individuals and groups by
legitimizing their status. Eg. Testimonials enhance prestige of product and also
reflect prestige on person who provides the testimonial. His testimonial is a
testimonial to his own status.
 The assumption that if you really matter, you will be at focus of mass attention,
and if you are at focus of mass attention, you really matter.

2. The enforcement of social norms:

 Publicity closes the gap between "private attitudes" and "public morality".
Publicity exerts pressure for a 'single morality' and calls for public reaffirmation

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of the social norm. This function of public exposure is 'institutionalized in the
mass media of communication'.
 At times, the media may start a 'crusade' on a specific issue, this provides 'an
organized center for otherwise unorganized individuals'. This focuses the public's
attention on a few, centralized, simplified issues. The presentation of simple
alternatives. Circular, self-sustaining process based on self-interest.

3. The narcotizing dysfunction:

 It is called dysfunction because it is not in the interest of modern complex society
to have large masse of the population 'politically apathetic and inert'.
 The vast supply of communications elicits a 'superficial concern' which 'cloaks
mass apathy'. Overexposure has led to a narcotized effect when people are
intellectualized by not activated. Media encourages secondary contact with world
of political reality, of reading, listening, thinking, but does not take action. "He
comes to mistake knowing about problems of the day for doing something about
them" and he doesn't feel any guilt, so unaware of the problem. That is why it is
so effective.

The structure of ownership and operation:

 Social affects vary according to ownership and control. American media deals
with privately owned enterprises under profit-oriented management.

Social conformism:
 Maintenance of current social and economic system.
 It is not what is said, it is what is not said, what is omitted.
 Commercially sponsored mass media promote a 'largely unthinking allegiance to
our social structure', who do not work for changes.
 Economic gains chosen over social objectives. Sensitive issues omitted.

Impact on popular taste:

 Many people see media as having a negative effect on popular taste, that 'aesthetic
and intellectual tastes have been depraved'. However, the audience for the arts has
changed. The audience used to be only 1% or 2% of population. Widespread
literacy and popular education, new technologies of mass communication

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enlarged market for the arts. 'With the rise of popular education, there has
occurred a seeming decline of popular taste'. There is a gap between literacy and
comprehension.
 Has mass media cause the decline in intellectual and artistic elite of art forms? It
could be because of exposure to people and the tastes of some sectors.
 There have been failed attempts to raise the level of popular vulture, but they have
been rejected. Would a radical change in mass media actually affect the tastes of
mass audiences?

Propaganda for social objectives:

The conditions for the effective use of mass media for 'propaganda for social
objectives':
1. Monopolization
2. Canalization
3. Supplementary face to face contact

Monopolization:
 Definition: When there is little or no opposition in the mass media to the diffusion
of values, policies, or public images. The monopolization of the mass media
occurs in the absence of counterpropaganda.
 Indigenous to authoritarian society. Also occurs during war. Media create popular
idols.
 Counterpropaganda causes neutralization.

Canalization:
 Advertising 'canals' or directs preexisting behaviour patterns of attitudes. It
seldom attempts to instill new attitudes or to create significantly new behaviour
patterns.

Supplementation:

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 The combination of mass media and personal relations. 'This complex of
reciprocal reinforcement by mass media and personal relations' is particularly
successful.
 Mass communication inadequate in terms of 'transforming exposure to
propaganda into effectiveness of propaganda'. It is most effective when in
conjunction with local centers of organized face-to-face contact.
Factors which contribute to enhanced effectiveness of joining mass media and direct
personal contact.
1. Local discussions reinforce contact "clinching effect".
2. Central media lessens task of local organizer and personnel requirements.
3. Appearance of a representative on a nationwide network symbolizes
legitimacy and significance of movement confers status of national
movement on local cells.
Limitations:
1. Monopolization of attention rare, 'opposing propagandas have free play in a
democracy'.
2. Often, basic social issues involve more than a mere canalizing of preexisting
basic attitudes, they call, rather, for substantial changes in attitude and
behaviour.
3. Locally organized centers for face-to-face contact expensive.
 Therefore, the present role of media is limited: it is largely confined to peripheral
social concerns and media do not exhibit social power commonly attributed to
them.

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Mass Media
Reading Summary 26.12.05
" " \

Economic censorship of means of communications threatens freedom of press.

Censorship is generally considered a characteristic of undemocratic societies. This
research is of the roots of censorship.

Classic definition of censorship: Censorship is a means carried out by the

leadership, the society, the religious establishment or by a specific social group, in
order to supervise means of communication and to prevent the publication of
information within, in the eyes of the elite leadership, because there is a threat to their
existence or on the values they espouse.

Types of censorship: (1) political, (2) religious, (3) socio-ethical, (4) security. In an
autocratic or totalitarian society, censorship is unlimited. But in a democratic society,
every one of these types is seen as harming the freedom of expression and freedom of
press and seen as a threat to the 'free market of opinions and ideas'. There are
exceptions where censorship is allowed: to protect society, particularly during wars or
threats to its existence, or to protect specific groups within, eg. Minors.

Impact of globalization: With the development of a global economy, global

communication, technological communication, and the reciprocity between
economics and communication, creates a new kind of censorship: economic
censorship.

Five Theoretical premises:

In discussion of censorship there are five main viewpoints on explaining censorship
from different fields: (1) sociology, (2) political science, (3) law, (4) political
economics, (5) research of mass communications and journalism.

1. Sociology: Functional approach recognizes social institutions as a grouping of

values, norms and behavioural rules as a central part of society. Discusses the

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reciprocity between the social institutions and between the institution of
communications and all other institutions.

In traditional, fundamentalist societies, censorship is just one of the tools used

for gaining mass support and gives legitimization to that form. In a religious
society, censorship is used to prevent harm to holy values. To prevent
publication which might harm the ideological infrastructure and justifies it by
saying it is 'immoral'. In these societies it is claimed to protect the wellbeing of
the entire society and its values.

2. Political Science: Censorship seen as one of the characteristics of undemocratic

regimes. One of the tools used by the leadership to control all flows of
information. Compares between undemocratic society and 'social responsibility'
which characterizes the Western democratic state. Acknowledges that there is still
censorship in 21st century because of economic censorship which is not
necessarily carried out by the leaders.

3. Law: Two approaches. (1) Based on socio-political framework in USA, which is

concerned with fixing the laws which are against freedom of press or harm it. This
is 'full freedom'. (2) Based on socio-political framework in Continental Europe,
which defines freedom of pres as one the basic rights of society and translates this
to laws which protect freedom of press on an individual level. This is 'partial
freedom' because it recognizes not only the individual's rights but also allows for
boundaries, including censorship.

4. Political Economics: See means of communication, first and foremost as

economic business. Communication cooperates with political elite (both with
similar interests). Institution of communication is protector of political institution,
not its opponent. According to this theory, political institution does not need to
censor themselves, because media already does so as to prevent the publication of
information which could harm the political system or social order, or cause
economic instability.

5. Research in communications: Normative approach sees in journalism a system

which operates in the spirit of 'social responsibility' as its role. The state and

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leadership has the power to punish postpartum, means of communication which
did not act in that spirit.

Summary of 5 approaches: All 5 approaches explain, in their own way, the source of
existence of censorship and its aims.

Sociological functional approach sees in censorship an action aimed at hiding the

relationships between social instructions and between those institutions and
communication.

Political science approach sees censorship as an action which is an expression of

power between the different components of society, is carried out by the elite
leadership in order to control the flow of information and to maintain stability of
leadership.

Judicial approach defines in a legal way the boundaries of censorship and freedom
of expression according to the judicial systems of specific countries full or
partial freedom of press.

Political economic approach sees censorship as an expression of the political

economic leadership through communications, that there is a connection between
them. Sees in censorship a way of maintaining the existing socio-political
situation.

In communication research, the normative approach sees external censorship,

which is enslaved to external considerations o the professional norms which are at
the foundation of communicative actions.

Recognized types of censorship:

Security censorship: Limited to times of war and emergency can exist in a
democratic state or society (unlike other censorships).

Two ways of investigating supplementary elements of censorship:

(1) The source of the censorship, (2) the level at which it operates.
The source of the censorship: (1) External: by means of laws, regulations or
techniques of compulsion. (2) Internal-independent: the limits communications puts
on itself voluntarily. (3) Agreement (or cooperation): Through means of agreements

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and arrangements, between the government or other bodies and communications, the
purpose to prevent any harmful publication.

Operation of censorship on four levels: (1) Level of institution of communications, (2)

level of medium, (3) level of communication organization, (4) individual level.
1. Institution of communications: government, official body of media.
2. Medium: written media, movies.
3. Communication organization: radio station, newspaper.
4. Individual level: the journalist, television producer, editor.

Important to distinguish between censorship of individual and individual who is part

of an organization. Eg. editor is not only himself, but also part of organization.
Another distinction is between the aims and motivations of censorship and the means
and tools used to reach those aims.

A new kind of censorship: economic censorship. Not a new phenomenon, but only
recognized as a kind of censorship in last couple of decades, because (1) censorship
usually seen as an action of the leadership through media (even dictionaries express it
that way). It is believed that with establishment of economic freedom it is not possible
that there is economic censorship. (2) On an empirical research level, economic
communication did not received much attention, partly because the connection was
not assumed between communication and the economic system. The connection
between the professional-journalism system and the economic-management system.
(3) Members of the media themselves did not tend to identify economic censorship as
censorship. They saw it only on an individual level, also, saw the media as 'the
watchdog of democracy', therefore to supervise the leadership and its actions,
therefore, they saw the giving into internal economic censorship is a necessary
sacrifice to fulfill their social calling. Also, they did not reveal it in fear of exposing
business secrets which could get them fired.
Communications and economics in the 21st century:
1. Relationship between state-society, especially state-communications. Status of
state weakened, especially with growth of political economic masses, eg.

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introduction of EU. Localization and development of socio-cultural communities
within state.

2. Development and modernization of technology has blurred the lines between mass
communications and interpersonal communications. It knows no boundaries and
old forms of communication rushed to join the business opportunities created by
this. Process of centralization of communications. Also, in hands of few people
are many forms of media. " " - In Israel, ( Moses
family), ( Nimrodi family), ( Shoken family). Each of them owns a
newspaper, various publications, magazines, music companies, books.
3. Structure and role of institution of communications, the diffusion
of fields. The blurring between the industry of mass media and other industries
and services. Eg. the Nimrodi family which owns a number of media
publications, is also in real estate, insurance, hospitality and health services.
Because of this they role is not only the classic role of " "or gatekeeper, they
can also physically censor (allow and disallow) the content.

4. Development of huge international corporations in the field of communications

like in many other fields. These corporations 'swallow' up national and
international companies. These corporations cross physical and political borders,
are motivated by economic, global interests, without national or local
consideration.

5. Weakening of public communication as seen by (1) the death of political party

journalism in the Western world, and (2) weakening (till point of near extinction)
the public broadcast, especially in Europe. Journalism has become almost entirely
privatized and commercialized.

6. Move from small business owners and families to corporations. Family businesses
not only motivated by money, saw success not only in terms of money. The
success of corporations is analyzed daily on the stock market, therefore, CEOs
communications as the key to the world of business.

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7. The change in content in communications. Communications has become a huge
industry combined with entertainment and news, the purpose of which is the
maximize ratings and revenue. This is seen by increase of 'soft' news and
reduction of 'hard' news. Privatized, commercialized communication is dependent
on sales and marketing

All these processes cause either directly or indirectly, the activation of economic
censorship. Huge competition between audiences, viewers and listeners is economic
in essence.

Economic censorship in practicality

Seen in prevention of advertising which could harm economic interests. Eg. In

USA much criticism in newspaper on dangers of smoking, because of pressure
from nature groups.

Distinction between two kinds of external censorship: positive" )"( and

negative (")" . Positive come from positive reinforcements, usually
stream of awareness, or concentrated buying of memberships, to get desired
effect. Negative comes from negative reinforcements, getting rid of awareness,
threat of banning of awareness, cancellation of membership, to get a similar
effect.

Three distinctions:
1. Distinction between economic means of fulfillment of censorship for other aims,
and censorship whose aim is economic. The use of economic tools for other goals
(eg. political, religious, security) is widespread since printing revolution.
Economic censorship, however, operates from economic motivations and aims for
an economic business purpose.

2. Distinction between trial of using censorship and the use of censorship. Only
pressures which brought about the prevention of publication are considered
censorship. It is when the publisher decides what the public will hear and what it
won't. (Collins)

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3. Timing of pressures. Where the pressures before or after the publication. It can
only be determined if it is censorship after it has been published (or not
published).

Criteria for characterization of economic censorship carried out:

1. Anchored in the law: Does censorship act from power of law, or independent of
the law and its legislation. There are laws allowing economic censorship in both
undemocratic and democratic countries.
2. Way of operating: Carried out in legitimate ways or by illegal means?
3. View: Does the censorship operate in an open, overt way, or by circumventing, or
even hidden way.
4. Institutionalization: Is it operated by institutions, or by a body or by individuals
or a group.
5. Tactics: Direct or roundabout way?
6. Aim: Who is the censorship for? Is the goal the person with information, media
channel, media person, advertiser?
7. Level: Are the means and purposes to prevent publication within a political,
economic, legal, social or other framework?
8. Content: Is it in the realm of news, entertainment and culture, or advertising?
9. Medium: Is it for a means of communication, for a specific medium, for specific
channels or communication organizations or individual?
10. Who is the beneficiary? Who benefits from the censorship? Is it the public. A
group or community within it (eg. religious, ethnic), interest group (eg. economic,
age group, gender) or individuals?
11. The means: Using positive or negative means?
12. Success: How successful the censorship was, did the prevention of publication
succeed entirely or partly?

Workers of communication reluctant partners

Presupposition for democratic society is the existence of a free market of ideas

and opinions, without boundaries, every boundary harms the freedom of the state
and society. Censorship stops the flow of information and therefore harms
freedom of press.

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The leadership has interest to hide things from the public, because they are meant
to seem omnipotent, "" , which provides only good.

The assumption that communications is neutral is untrue. Within the media, there
are personal economic interests where there are those who utilize their place in
order to further their own economic interest.

In a multi-cultural society, any kind of censorship, especially by the leadership,

can come into vast opposition because censorship is, in essence, the prevention of
extreme and different opinions.

Workers of media also become partners to this personal interest. Mass media has
turned into a huge industry, with many hoping to get a place in the huge
metropolis. They are forced to participate in censorship.

Summary: The danger of economic censorship is no longer just theoretical. It is more

exposed, uncovered and tangible.

Ways to deal with political censorship:

1. Increased awareness of the existence of political censorship and the inherent
dangers of a 'free market of opinions and ideas' in a democratic society.
2. Strengthening of status of public communication, particularly, public broadcast,
which are not dependent on personal, commercial interests.
3. Changing of law of private means of communication. "The private newspaper
controls the air required for a democracy. It is not only a private asset. It is also
public property."
4. Strengthening of professional status of media workers, including consolidation of
ethics, to help them stand as individuals and as a united group against the
pressures of economic censorship.

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Mass Media
Reading Summary
John Fiske, Madonna

Madonna's personality, image, what she represents is as important as her music.

Music is just a platform for her to express other ideas.

Early career:

Struggled to find success. She had trouble getting discovered. Her image made her
popular and famous. Excellent marketing targeted at young girls.

Sexuality:

Used her sexuality:

o Positions of surrender.
o Bending down to men.
o Image of Marilyn Munroe (sex icon).

Contradictions show struggles between patriarchy and women's opportunities.

Sexual physical pleasure, she chooses navel as centre of sexual being not a
typical place for men to admire. Enjoys her sexuality. Her love of herself is the
appeal.

Provides girls with opportunity to find their sexuality. Madonna is sexy without
needing men.

Power:

Madonna makes connection for fans between pleasure and moments of power.
Fantasies of power.

Women using their looks to control relationships. Shows girls are equal or more
powerful in relationships than boys.

Image plays role in cultural connection and power. Understanding of social

identity and power over it.

Feeling of independence and power related to enjoyment of control, connection

between sexuality and social connections of individual.

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Criticism:

Criticism centered on her sexuality, 'smuttiness'.

Her message:

Hidden meaning of a woman in a patriarchal society.

Traditionally, woman seen in terms of men's opinions of her. Madonna suggests

dissolution of role of woman.

Religious symbols:

Utilizes polarization of femininity angel/virgin Satan/whore.

Takes religious symbols and plays with them. Sees them as icons, beautiful, not
with religious meaning.

Independence:

Positive image of sexuality with her own independence and strength, 'independent
sexuality'.

Presents herself as in control of her image and creative process of her image.

Overstatement of clothing, make up: her choice to dress like that, not patriarchal
society, she creates her own meaning.

Uses her body as an image.

Language:

Plays on words. Popular words in culture used in her song, 'Like a Virgin', words
on love, religion, sex, romantic love. Also uses street smarts and survival words.

Religion vs. sex (more emphasis on sex). Romance vs. sexual survival.

'Boy toy': Is she the boy toy or the boy the toy?

Creates fantasy world with her image and lyrics.

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Mass Media
Reading summary, 23.1.06
Janice Radway, Interpretive Communities and Variable Literacies:
The Functions of Romance Reading
Interpretation of reading
Books and reading serve a variety of purposes and functions for a wide variety of
individuals. Instead of seeing literacy on a hierarchical scale which is linked with
social judgment and bourgeois ideology; literacy can be much more complex when it
comes to literature, there are an astonishing variety of circumstances within which
reading occurs, and thus, a variety of literary behaviours. Reception theory or readerresponse criticism challenged absolute autonomy of text. Meaning is dependent on
interaction between reader and text. There is a lingering tendency to give primacy to
text, but instead of seeing text as that which directs, controls and determine the
reader's response to it, the reader receives the text and responds to it according to
his/her own situation, instead of seeing all readers as alike.
Semiotic reading theories conceive of production or construction as opposed to
reception or consumption because reading is a productive activity in which a reader
actively makes sense of the verbal inscriptions on the page. The multiplicity of codes,
contexts and circumstances shows us that the same message can be decoded in many
different ways according to diverse systems of convention. Interpretation is dependent
not only on the text itself but also on who the reader is, how she understands the
process of reading, and on the cultural context within which she operates. Reading is a
complicated process which is fundamentally social that varies in both time an place.
Different readers read differently because they belong to interpretive communities
each of which relates to print differently and for different purposes.
Interpretive communities may actually be differently literate: differ over what to do
with metaphors and tropes, may disagree about nature and purpose of reading itself.
Groups are difficult to identify: are they conscious collections, those who know they
are in a group? Or does it include those who unconsciously share certain assumptions
about reading as well as preferences for reading material?
Categories: Readers choose a category because the book addresses and fulfils needs
which are created by essential features of their social life.
The Romance Novel based on group of women in Smithton.
Readers are united by common purposes, preferences, and interpretive procedures.
These aspects of reading are a function of certain common factors of their lives.
Limited sample, would need to do further study to know whether it can be generalized
to population.
Selection of texts: Their activities governed by sense that romance had something to
do with manner and tone of presentation of a love relationship. Their definition
identified the fundamental characters and event in the story, but also specified the
evolution of the action and implicitly, the nature of the response it aimed to evoke in
the reader.
What they accomplished by reading these books?

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Need to see ideal relationship: Women's interest in the romance came not from any
interest in sexual competition, same sex friendships, or contrast, but from a deepseated need to see an ideal relationship worked out between a man and woman.
The ideal romance focused on a single relationship.
Women's triumph: In contrast to feminist criticism, readers saw intelligent and
independent heroines. Feminist criticism claims that these women simply don't know
how to interpret characters correctly, for they are only superficially dependent, and
are in reality deeply dependent and incapable of action. This might be a result of
attitude towards language. The Smithson readers trusted that the author chose her
words careful and that they did not judge verbal assertion by comparing it with
character's actions. If writer says that heroine is intelligent and independent, nothing
she does can alter her basic character. Because the man always learns her lesson, the
women interpret this as the triumph of her values. It is a different form of literacy.
Women's reasons for reading romance fiction
Enjoyment and to escape: To escape from their daily problems. This helps her find a
legitimate way of releasing her from her duties temporarily and of replenishing the
energy which is constantly used to care for others. It is a declaration of independence
for women. It allows her to have time and space to herself. The double burden has
earned her right to do something nice for herself. Need for respite in a traditional
patriarchal marriage, where women are supposed to take care of everyone; nurtures
but does not get nurtured. In the novels, the heroine gets attention and care of an
extraordinary man. They are purchasing personal space and vicarious attention by
reading about it. There is a role conflict though and feelings of guilt
To learn: To acquire factual information about geography, culture, history. They
assume that the romance authors research the historical and physical background to
their stories. And they assume that when an author makes a factual statement about
the background, she does so because it is "true". They see reading as a process of
education. This is used to convince family that it is a worthy, goal-directed activity,
so she can justify the time and women spent on it. She stories factual material as
information and displays it to others as her own knowledge, it convinces her that she
is not a mere housewife, she has continued to better herself, and shows her as a
capable individual.
Reassuring process: Author selected language suitable for middle-class housewife
and mother with a year or two of college education. This permits the women to rely
heavily on their memory of previously learned cultural codes. Reading is a highly
reassuring process, because it allows a woman to believe she is learning but at the
same time reassuring her that she already knows how to make sense of on existence
which is always as she expects. The reader comes to value herself and her abilities
more and feels powerful enough to seek change. But it is also possible that it reassures
her that nothing needs to be changed at all. Reassures her that domestic world which
is valuable. Reinforcement of patriarchal constitution of women, because it reassures
women that the sphere they occupy is right and fulfilling, and that all their needs can
be met within it, because the heroine is an occupant and proponent of the female
world of love and emotional commitment.
Satisfies need to receive care: The ideal hero is a mix between masculine strength
and power and a more feminine sensitivity and tenderness. Readers prefer heroes with
some softness to his demeanour. It gave them psychological gratification for the need

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to be the passive recipient of another's total and tender care. Validity of desires to
need attention.
There might be subgroups within interpretive communities. All components of literate
behaviour (the desire to read, choice of category, interpretation, uses) may be a result
of social features that characterize different people's lives.