Media Criticism

Vera Hermawan S.I.Kom., M.I.Kom

Producer-consumer binary
The line between blurred
Made by producer- consumer read-changing, alteriong, editing, erasing –
becoming producers themselves
Optimistic & Pesimistic view
Awake of grassroote politics +
Collective intelligent collaboration +
iSpy (Mark Andrejevic) -
Control and power held through free open individual information
What is Critic?
What the different between feedback?
What the different between reviews?
Feedback
Process the consumer giving his or her opinion on the art/artefact/product
back to the producer
Reviews
Commentary by consumers/third party, sometimes about expressing one’s
opinion and evaluation to alert other consumer to the product’s quality
Criticism
Done by third party neither consumer nor the producer
Less alerting about product, but guiding new vision
Telling beyond product (social context)
Can create new audience
Criticism
Power masked as something else: truth, objective of beauty, democracy,
terrorism
Judgement tied to social status and power (Bourdieu, 1987)
“High-low” in culture (Raymond William, 1997)
Walter Benjamin
High/low distinction is pervasive aura
Pervasive aura from enshrinement (membuat unik, berharga, bertuah,
artistic, authenticity)
Authenticity à tradition à hegemonic elitism
Destroyed by reproduction and make renewal humankind interaction
Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno
They commenting on Hitler's propagandistic use of the radio, note "the gigantic
fact that the speech that penetrates everywhere replaces its content,"1 a
formula that has been taken one step further by television: On TV, the image
dominates, overpowering not only the fact of speech but also its content
Criticism disappear in culture industry
Expert are despised for their pretentious claim to know better than the other
“The critic undemocratic”
Other Expert
Media criticism is in an undeveloped state, today, largely because the
mainstream media allows virtually no open discussion of the subject(Ken
Sanes)
Yet considering the intimate relationship between culture and media and
that, for many, the media have become their culture, a theory that views the
media outside the context of culture will be afflicted with myopia. (Douglas
Kellner)