print technology
led to more linear thinking, individualism, and eventually capitalism.
electronic technology
has retribalized us into a global village and created a new orality.
Stuart Hall’s Audience Reception Model
dominant reading, negotiated reading, oppositional reading.
Dominant reading
- interprets message as intended by producer.
- usually consistent with dominant ideology.
Negotiated reading
- party interprets message as intended by producer.
- modifies based on individual cultural position.
Oppositional reading
- interprets message in alternative way to producer.
- resists dominant meaning of text.
- may just misunderstand text.
Encoding
process by which cultural texts are constructed by producers to deliver conscious/unconscious messages.
Decoding
process by which audiences interpret cultural texts.
Adorno & Horkheimer
focused on culture industry (contemporary mass culture).
ex: publishing, music, recording, film, TV.
Adorno & Horkheimer’s key points
mass culture is;
- produced by corporations.
- consumed by mass audiences.
- consumers are passive.
- first purpose is to generate profit, second is maintain status quo.
- pseudo novelty masquerading as new.
- commodified.
Benjamin - Frankfurt
- culture industry produces replicable art.
- loss of unique “aura” associated with traditional art.
- sees revolutionary potential in mass production.
Habermas - Frankfurt
the public sphere: a place for rational, political, public debate.
- mass media and consumer culture extinguished this potential.
Birmingham School
cultural turn –> interdisciplinary with widened focus of study.
ex: working cultures and subcultures.
Working cultures
- focus on lived experience of working-class people.
- active agents involved in transformation of culture.
Subcultures
- identifiable social group within a larger society.
- opposition to dominant culture.
