May 30th 2007 Kuhn, and the battle over Effects The Sociology of Knowledge

Opening Question Are there specific examples of these theories being operationalized? How does this occur in the effects field? Code Switching as a communication effect Alma: that there are universal constraints that exist across societies

What is a Hypothesis? Something that comes before research Often comes out of observations Example: Newton sees an apple fall Set up as “testable proposition” Make some predictions (about what will happen) Then test it Verify it Falsify it

Positivist Approach Traditionally has focused on deduction and testing of hypotheses, leading to the production of theory Vivian: there are media effects and the people who criticize them are too extreme / too critical Question: Are there tangible media effects? Example of Pakistan and the case of changing a song lyric because the name in it was used to harass a devout woman at a college Relationship to McQuail’s Eye: elements of the legal system compelling the song-writer to change his lyric The political system influencing the economic/cultural

Violence in Media The dean/father of this research is Gerbner Example of a kind of mediated/violence research: Bandura and the Bobo ndura.htm Simple question: does media influence behavior? Are children influenced by violence they see? This can be extrapolated to media (since it was media that were used when trying to standardize the “independent variable” (the violence that all children viewed

Objectivity and Subjectivity Objectivity: the idea that a person is neutral, fair, can see things with reason and not colored or influenced by their “biases” Subjectivity: the idea that people see things in relation to their experiences, their feelings, and through their unique filters of sense and thought. Related is the question of “universality” and “uniqueness” Whether there is one truth in the social world or not Whether uniformity exists and, further, can be uncovered using a standard method Positivists believe that there are universal truths in the social world. We can test them and verify/falsify them and “prove” or “disprove” them Non-positivists say: for humans it may not be possible There may be NO universals regulating human behavior?

One Question About social order: Human societies easily fall into disarray Governments try to keep social order (a kind of uniformity) However, while we value social order, we also value individual freedom Thus, we have to try to find a balance between them. Ex: Pakistan case: to an American this is an excessive control exerted by government over personal expression

Media’s Role in Worsening this Balance Noele Newmann: “The Spiral of Silence” refers to how people tend to remain silent when they feel that their views are in the minority. The model is based on three premises: people have a sixth-sense to know the prevailing public opinion, even without access to polls people have a fear of isolation and know what behaviors will increase their likelihood of being socially isolated people are reticent to express their minority views, primarily out of fear of being isolated.

Related to Effects Media effects are long term They can only be seen through the lens of history How is Gerbner related to this? Cultivation Theory

About Media and Cultivation Gerbner: People think of television as programs, but television is more than that; television is a mythology highly organically connected repeated every day so that the themes that run through all programming and news have the effect of cultivating conceptions of reality.

Mythologies of TV What are the messages or ideas that come out of the TV? Political ideas like supporting the State or social stability Also a sense of national identity Economically we learn about a commercial system; about consumption as “a way of life” We come to believe that this is a “natural” way of living Over time these images/messages get “naturalized” or “cultivated” into our consciousness A media effect

“Myths” and Barthes Mythology differs from “myths” as used by Barthes In some way he picked a misleading (wrong) word He doesn’t mean something that is false He means something that is invented but becomes a reality after it is used again and again Example: men are “this” and women are “that” Further example: Miss Universe competition Such “myths” of a “real woman” in a bikini and receiving a crown help to “construct womanhood”. It also reinforces and/or legitimates the practice of “male gaze” These elements are reproduced over and over

Thomas Kuhn What does this all have to do with Thomas Kuhn? His work was on how scientific revolutions occur He has a concept of “paradigms” which organize our thinking They influence the way that a community approaches a “problem” / sees their field Example: the art of Constable (in the 1820s) and Pollock (in the 1950s) Compared, we see very different “thought styles”, conventions, approach to shape, color, representation, and expression

Revolution in Science Paradigms shift/change when some event forces them to shift Kuhn’s example was the discrepancy between Ptolomy’s theory of the universe and the position of the stars. Many inaccuracies occurred in navigation because the theory was wrong. What was required was a theory which better fit the facts or else predicted the reality that would emerge

Applying Kuhn to the Social Sciences Vivian: can we use this to explain black thinkers in the US who started talking about ethnic equality? What is the history of black people in America? they were slaves. Brought against their will. Lived unequal to whites. A war was fought between 2 regions of the US and in 1865 blacks became “free”. However, it was not until 100 year later that some laws actually gave them freedom to vote or have equal education and public services (in some parts of the country). The Message: Paradigms can take hundreds of years to change

Concluding for this Week The problem in media studies is that there is NO one dominant paradigm At one point it was effects. However it was challenged and although the idea of “meaning” replaced it, meaning was not strong enough to take over the field. In the end, no better theory has replaced it Next we will begin looking at the theory of meaning.