INTRO TO COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA

STUDIES
UNIT 3: THEORIES OF COMMUNICATION II
CRITICAL THEORIES

1. THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL AND COMMUNICATION THEORY

2. THE BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL AND CULTURAL STUDIES

THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL AND COMMUNICATION THEORY

 Group of critical theorists
 Institute of Social Research (University of Frankfurt)
 Walter Benjamin, Adorno. Horkheimer.
 1930s -> critical approach to communication and culture from different disciplines
(philosophy, political economy, sociology…)
 they were the first to analyse the effects of mass culture and the consumer society

THE CULTURE INDUSTRY:

 From a book published by members of Frankfurt School.

 technology production of materials consumption of goods

 Consumption of mechanically cultural products (cinema/radio) -> production for
entertainment (consumers didn’t know it had ideological purposes)
 Consumers adapted their needs around these cultural products (not desiring anything
else)
 This entertainment blinded the audience from questioning the system (fake depiction
of society, politics…) and from noticing that they were being manipulated.
 Entertainment = business

THE CULTURE INDUSTRY WAS AN INSTRUMENT OF SOCIAL CONTROL WHICH GAVE A

FAKE IDEA OF FREEDOM TO PEOPLE

 EXAMPLES: Hollywood production system (movies and hit songs based on formulas)
 Entertainment worked in a way that every dominant and working system replicated

itself -> production & consumption

ONE DIMENSION MAN:

 “Advanced industrial society” created false needs (advertised products in a way

people thought that they needed them even if they didn’t), introducing people into
the system of production and consumption (through mass media, ads…)
  CONSUMERISM and INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY = social control.

THE BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL AND CULTURAL STUDIES

 Against the elitist ideas of the Frankfurt school.

 On the contrary: they studied mass culture

1. Popular culture was a place of resistance and negotiation for marginalized

(“rejected”) groups without power
2. Cultural studies = a constantly interacting and changing process.

OBJECTIVES OF CULTURAL STUDIES:

 Understanding culture in all its complex forms

 Analysing its origins and its historical, social, and political context
 Examining its relation to power.
 NOT STUDYING ONE CULTURE BUT ALL

HALL´S THEORIES:

 ENCODING/DECODING MODEL = how messages are produced and interpreted.

o 4 stages of media communication:

1. Production of the message

2. Circulation: reception of the message and influence from it by

audience

3. Consumption: the message has been adapted and realized.

4. Reproduction: production of a new message according to the effects

on the audience.

o 3 positions on decoding a message:

 DOMINANT: the receiver accepts the code of the producer.

 NEGOTIATED: between accepting or rejecting the code
 OPPOSITIONAL: rejects the code

o He broke with the American dominant model of communication -> AUDIENCE

= PASSIVE CONSUMER of mass culture