CONTENTS Preface 1. Introduction: Place, the Media and Popular Culture Jacquelin Burgess and John R. Gold ‘Television in the Third World: A High Wind on Jamaica Peter Gould and Anne Lyew-Ayee ‘The Changing Concept of Place in the News Susan R. Brooker-Gross Natural Hazards in Novels and Films: Implications for Hazard Perception and Behaviour Diana M. Liverman and Douglas R. Sherman “The Truth is only known by Guttersnipes’ Bob Jarvis: From ‘Metropolis’ to "The City’: Film visions of the Fu- ture City, 1919-1939 John R. Gold ‘The English Television Landscape Documentary: A Look at Granada Martin J. Youngs Racism, Nationalism and the Creation of a Regional Myth: The Southern States after the American Civil War Catherine P. Silk and John A. Silk New8 from Nowhere: The Press, the Riots and the Myth of the Inner City Jacquelin Burgess 10, News and the Dissemination of Fear Susan J. Smith List of Contributors Bibliography IndexCHAPTER 1: PLACE, THE MEDIA AND POPULAR CULTURE Jacquelin Burgess and John R. Gold ‘The media have been on the periphery of geographical inquiry for too Jong. The very ordinariness of television, radio, newspapers, fiction, film and pop music perhaps masks their importance as part of people's geography ‘threaded into the fabric of daily life with deep taproots into the well-springs of popular consciousness’ (Harvey, 1984, p7). The institutions and practices that comprise the media have a significance that demands our attention. They are an integral part of popular culture and, as such, are an essential element in moulding individual and social experiences of the world and in shaping the relationship between people and place. In providing a context for the essays that follow, this introduction has five major sections. In the first part, we outline some of the key terms to be employed here. The second part discusses those branches of human geography where there has already been interest in the media, albeit in most cases somewhat tangential. The third part identifies the way in which interpretative approaches in geography have steered away from the study of the media and popular culture. It is suggested that the way forward here may well lie in closer attention to a range of studies drawn from sociology and related disciplines which are then discussed in section four. Some of the key works may well be familiar to geographers - such as the writings of E.P. ‘Thompson, Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart; others may be less so, for example the research done by Stuart Hall and his colleagues at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. This section secks to identify the various strands of theoretical debate in popular cultural studies, with attention being drawn to parallel themes in geography. It is also argued that there is an urgent need for theoretical debate about the ways in which environmental meanings and experience are shaped. In other words, we contend that a geography of the media must address the question of the ideology of places as well as focusing on their qualities and the emotional experiences that they generate. The final part of this chapter introduces the nine essays that follow in terms of 1Introduction Fo major perspectives: a behavioural approach derived Principally from mainstream American media research, and ritieg] approaches that draw upon a variety of Marxist formulations to explore the ideological role played by the media, Defining Terms At the outset, it must be stressed that the four major terms to be used - ‘culture’, ‘popular culture’, ideology’ and ‘media’ are the subjects of Shusiderable debate. Each carries a variety of meanings ead tne changed in usage over time Culture, as Williams (1976) notes, is one ofthe most difficult. words in the English language since it’ has two related, but distinct, crinuiations ~ with Art and with Society, Although traditional criticism had assumed that expositions of culture were only to be found in literature and the Arts, the term ‘culture’ embodies a cara cons, and, from the perspective ofthis book, itis important to EmPhasise that popular media, such as newspapers, music and film, be considered just as legitimate an expression of culture oe literature, sculpture and the theatre, This leads on to the term popular culture. Our definition is closely Keisure and recreation, but can carry either positive ce negative connotations. In literary-cultural formulations, for instance, ‘high culture’ represents those works of art and literature that are recognised by an clit to have aesthetic value and.are revered for their insight into all aspects of human life. They are assumed to be of 2Introduction greater permanence than, say, pulp literature or popular music. The problem with such assumptions, however, is that evaluations of the worth of literature or music changes over time. A good example of this is supplied by Bennett (1982, p38) who summarised the reactions of the literary critic, Q.D. Leavis, to the intrusion of market forces into the cultural sphere during the 1930s: Pulp journalism has replaced respectable journalism, the nove! has, ‘been sentimentalised, diversion has replaced edification as the motive for reading and, oh horrors! the presumption of the middle-brow public encouraged it to argue for a place for Arnold Bennett or even Ernest Hemingway on the university curriculum. Popular culture is concerned with the everyday practices, ‘experiences and beliefs of what have been called ‘the common people’ = that overwhelming proportion of society that does not occupy positions of wealth and power. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that involvement with and enjoyment of popular culture are not class-specific. Cunningham (1980), for example, explored the extent to which social classes intermingled in places of recreation and entertainment during the mid-Victorian period. He demonstrated that while the classes kept themselves apart, there could be equal enjoyment of the same entertainments. Cunningham also showed the ways in which leisure was seen as a dangerous force in the early nineteenth century and how it was gradually shorn of economic and tadical political associations so that it no longer posed a threat to the dominant classes. This negotiation of consent through hegemony is an important theoretical concept in popular culture, as it asserts that there is a continuing interplay between the respective cultures and ideologies of dominant and subordinate groups in a society. In turn, this leads us on to the term ideology. Ideology, in the sense used here, adds a political dimension to all forms of cultural expression. It may be taken to mean those systems of ideas and beliefs. used by social groups to make the world more intelligible to themselves, and which, not infrequently, are justifications which serve to mask specific sets of interests (Bell, 1977; Bammer, 1981). While the concept of ideology itself tends to be associated with Marxist analyses (e.g. Althusser, 1970), in practice it has a much wider usage across a broad span of the social sciences and humanities (see Gouldner, 1976; Gregory, 1978). From the point of view of the media, perhaps the most important 3Introduction question raised by the issue of ideology is that of the appropriation of ‘meaning or, put another way, deciding what is to be the ‘natural’ meaning of events, activities and experiences. This issue is given particular emphasis in European schools of cultural studies. ‘Semiologists, for example, have studied the ways in which ideology is presented and reinforced through language. In this context the media play an important part, especially through their role in mediating social knowledge and their function of bringing together and organising different conceptions in order to obtain consensus and consent (Hall, 1977). Before pursuing this matter further, however, itis necessary to say something about our fourth and last term, media . We have not used the phrase ‘mass media’ in this text since, as already seen, it carries pejorative connotations connected with an undifferentiated, passive and unquestioning audience who are vulnerable to crude media manipulation, The media are taken to comprise all those channels by which specialised groups employ technological devices to disseminate symbolic content to their audiences (after Janowitz, 1968). Thus music, films, television, comics, radio programmes, journals, poster advertising and view-data systems can all be regarded as examples of media, The common theme that links them is that each is produced by an organisation with specific forms of production and working practices, and with its own background of commercial and institutional interests. The history and development of the media cannot be discussed here, but a broad point may be made about the nature of media research. When examined as a whole, itis readily apparent that two distinct strands can be discerned which in turn relate to their origin, respectively, in American or European schools of thought. Mainstream media research in North America has been concerned primarily with the effects of media on individual attitudes and behaviour whereas, as has already been suggested, European studies have focused more on the production of meaning and the relations of the media to other cultural and political forms. Carey (1977), an American writer, has pointed to the dominance of the American paradigm over media studies since 1945 and lamented the fact that the USA remained “blissfully unaware’ of European work, which drew much more from phenomenology, structuralism and psychoanalysis. In his words: European and American work derives from quite different kindsIntroduction of intellectual puzzles and is grounded in two different metaphors for communication ... American studies are grounded in a transmission or transportation view of communication. They see communication ... as a process of transmitting messages at a distance for the purpose of control ... By contrast, the preponderant view of communication in European studies is a ‘ritual one: communication is viewed as a process through which a shared culture is created, modified and transformed ... A ritual view of communication is not directed towards the extension of sessages in space, but the maintenance of society in time; .. Ifa transmission view of communication centres on the extension of ‘messages across geography for purposes of control, a ritual view centres on the sacred ceremony which draws persons together in fellowship and communality. (Carey, 1977, p412) ‘The tensions between European and American media research are evident from this passage. Perhaps the key issue revolves around the theoretical viewpoint adopted which, in turn, influences the kind of questions being asked about the media. American work is characterised by a liberal-pluralist perspective, which presupposes a symmetry between media institutions and their audiences and presumes that the media reflect the full varity of views within society hich individuals can then accept of reject. By contrast, European approaches argue in favour of a critical perspective that focuses not ‘on the individual effects of media nor proceeds on assumptions of a liberal-pluralist society, but which sees the media as a conservative force encouraging consensus and consent with regard to existing conditions. The ideological role of the media, then, is to negotiate a ‘continuing acceptance of the status quo,and, from this perspective, the content of the media serves to reinforce specific ideological constructions of social realities. The significance of this fundamental dichotomy is a matter to which we will allude on numerous occasions in this Chapter. Geography and Communication Research Over the last fifteen years, there have been various occasions on which geographers have acknowledged the importance of the media but, by and large, the quality of the ensuing analysis has been 5