Notes: FCVM1400 Buying or Dying?

Media, Consumption and the Making of Self (updated:

11/10/2022 By R)
Summary of concepts from Lecture 1 to Lecture 7

Lecture 1 Fundamental thinking and reasoning skills

- Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to
believe.
- Critical thinking skills enable us to:
- understand the logical connections between ideas
- identify, construct and evaluate arguments
- solve problems methodically identify pitfalls and mistakes in reasoning
- check the importance and relevance of ideas
- justify and reflect upon one’s own beliefs and ideas
- Critical thinking helps us:
- acquire knowledge
- strengthen our arguments
- improve our theories and logical thinking
- improve our work processes and social institutions
- exploit our creativity
- An argument is an attempt to justify or prove a conclusion. In other words, an
argument tries to make you believe something and gives you reasons to believe it.
- Three elements:
- premises + conclusion = argument
- premises = reasons to justify a conclusion
- conclusion = a claim that is supported by a reason
- argument = a conclusion together with premises that support it
- Indicator words:
- FOR CONCLUSION – thus, therefore, hence, so, it follows that, shows that,
indicates that, proves that, then
- FOR PREMISES – for, since, because, for the reason that, on the grounds that,
follows from

- Buying Concept
- All advertisements are arguments, and all have the same conclusion: “Buying this
product”.
- Advertisements give you reasons to buy and consumers shouldn’t be misled.
- Advertisements want you to draw conclusions by yourself.

- Hidden assumption
 - Hidden assumptions are certain assumptions which are left implicit or hidden,
possibly leading to an invalid argument.
- e.g. 1. Homosexuality is wrong because it is unnatural.
- 2. She is beautiful because she is slim.
- Why is something unnatural is wrong? Why slim is beautiful?

Lecture 2 Moral reasoning frameworks for the values and meanings of consumption
- Theory:
- Utilitarianism - Actions are right if and because they promote more utility all around
- Consequentialism - the rightness of an action is wholly determined by the value of its
consequences.
- Absolutism - certain kinds of actions that are absolutely wrong; actions that could
never be right whatever the consequences.
- Hedonism - Pleasure is the only intrinsic good and that pain is the only intrinsic bad.

Lecture 3 Theories of media, consumption, culture and religious perspectives

- Marxism: a basic overview
- a critical worldview of power structure, class struggle ,and exploitation.
- Power structure:
- Infrastructure determines superstructure
- Infrastructure: the power structure in the world
- Superstructure: the ideologies/discourses of society
- Class struggle
- What is Class?
- classified by production relations
- Feudal age: nobility (usually wereland owners) oppresses general
people/slaves
- Industrial age: capitalists (owing capital) oppresses workers
- Exploitation
- Alienation: separating vocation from jobs/tasks
- You build a house for your family→ job satisfaction on the house
- You take a job and paint the wall →just get it done and get the
payment
- Surplus value: discrepancy between the market price and production cost
- You buy the coffee box at HKD 50
- Coffee farmers just receive HKD 10 for the amount of coffee beans
- HKD 40: exploited by capitalists
- Capitalism: Marxist reading on capitalist logics
- Over-production: capitalists produce more than what the society needs
- Over-consumption: people consume more than what they need
- Boom-and-bust cycle: the ups and downs of economy driven by over-production and
over-consumption
 - Fetishism: worship of objects which do not have substance
- Bible story: worshiping fetish (偶像) rather than GOD
- Consumption: from functional consumption to emotional consumption
- Function consumption: you buy what you need
- Emotional consumption: you buy what you want instead of need
- Examples of “wants”:
- Identity construction, e.g. decoration, fashion
- Cultural capital, e.g. wine-tasting
- Blurring boundaries between two
- Consumption as “religious worship”: I consume therefore I am
- Media: constructing “false consciousness” of fetishism so as to encourage over-
consumption: consuming more than what you need
- Advertising
- Brand-building
- Constructing the dominant ideology of a consuming world
- Shifting from original Marxism (infrastructure dominates superstructure) to
Frankfurt School (superstructure dominates infrastructure)

Lecture 4 Consumerism and Materialism

- Consumerism
- Ideologies justifying and promoting consumption
1. Neo-liberalism (新自由主義)
a. Consumption as an exercise of individual freedom
b. Consumption represents free market, democracy,, and social trust
2. Identity politics
a. Consumption as a gender and class representation
b. Consumption as a momentum of popular culture
c. Consumption as a momentum of sub-culture / alternative discourses
3. Cultural capital (Field theory)
a. Consumption as a representation of taste
b. Taste: intangible cultural boundary dividing people into hierarchical
and/or differential groups
c. Consolidating the class structure
- Criticisms and paradox of consumerism
1. Neo-liberalism
a. “Pseudo” individual freedom and free market: intensifying class
structure and social inequalities (no money, no choice)
2. Identity politics
a. Anti-consumerism: Danshari (だんしゃり) (斷捨離)
b. Green movement
c. Minimizing consumption as an identity
3. Cultural capital
a. Cultural jamming: derailing and mocking at high-end brand and
consumption
 - Materialism
- “Only the de facto substance is the real entity”
- Vision, mental status, and dream have to be materialized as policy delivery, goods,
products, services, and other substantial entities
- Consumption: actualizing your want and demand by consuming goods and services
- A dichotomy to materialism
- Idealism: human society is driven by mental mind, knowledge, systems of
thoughts.
- Youth as consumers
- Idealism is less appealing to the youth, who is believed to be tempted to
materialistic consumption

Lecture 5 Advertising, society and ideology- a critical study

- Advertising
- is a paid, non-personal communication of information about products or ideas by an
identified sponsor through the mass media in an effort to persuade or influence
behavior.
- Advertising and capitalism
- Economic aspect: An integral part of the flexible economy Accelerating the
speed of the circuit of capital (high turnover rate)
- Cultural aspect: Supply imaginary resources both for class distinction or
individual appropriation and resistance
- Advertising as an Institution of Consumer Culture
- THREE characteristics:
1. Ubiquity
a. The presence of advertising in our lives is pervasive and
unavoidable→continues to expand
b. while advertising is ubiquitous, it is hardly representative of
all of the country’s potential advertisers
2. Ordering of Roles
a. advertising orders human behavior into roles, like the seller,
retailer, wholesaler, consumer, target market, etc;
b. sets an agenda for us as consumers by defining standards and
criteria for our consumer behavior and;
c. Advertising also reorders the roles of people in the mass
media.
For example, the role of a magazine publisher has changed
from the seller of a product to the gatherer of a target market
for advertising
3. Regulation of Resources
a. Advertising stimulates the demand for consumer goods so
that consumers will buy the goods produced and money will
flow from consumers to producers
b. Advertising, in conjunction with branding, also developed as
a means for manufacturers to set prices for their products
 - Overview
- Media images help shape our view of the world and our deepest
values…and how to conform to the dominant system of norms,
values, practices, and institutions
- Due to the significant roles that media and advertising play in
individuals' identity formation and worldviews, it is necessary to
consider the role that ads play in reproducing or maintaining
hegemony.
- Hegemony = power or dominance that one social group has over
others (Lull, 1995)
- Advertising and Hegemony
- Advertisers, employed in an industry motivated by profit and once
labelled as, “hidden persuaders,” have worked in favor of
maintaining hegemony and the dominant ideology.
- HOWEVER, We live in a world of continuous and dynamic changes!
- Social change
- mean variations of any aspect of social processes, social patterns,
social interactions or social organization.
- It is a change in the institutional and normative structure of society
- Role of Advertisement:
- From Information provider on products and services to inducting
purchase of the product is facilitated through the process of
advertisements
- Transformation from “Producer Society” to “Consumer Society”
- Advertising induces the transition from produce directed to a
consumer-driven society.
- By stimulating demand for new products, advertising helped
manufacturers create new markets and recover product start-up costs
quickly.
- From product-centered to product-user relationship
- From literal and verbal to visual, image
- From functional appeal to emotional appeal; target to individualistic
lifestyle
- Mass needs →Individualistic needs
- Characteristics of advertising
Producer Society Consumer Society

Informative Emotional, sensual experience

Literal Visual
Direct message Indirect message
Rather close readings Rather open readings

Lecture 5 The expression of self on social media

- The expressiveness of the individual appears to involve two radically different kinds of sign
activity: the expression that he gives, and the expression that he gives off.
- 1st: verbal symbols to convey the information that he and the others are known to
attach to these symbols.
- 2nd: a wide range of action that others can treat as symptomatic of the actor and the
action was performed.