 CCT300: Critical Analysis of Media September 15: Media analysis and McLuhan’s laws of media

Administration  Get on the course wiki if you haven’t already  First in-class assignment is to create personal *wiki* - not a page.  Should look like xxx.wikispaces.com vs. cct300- f11.wikispaces/xxx.  Using previous personal wikis encouraged – build a portfolio!  Comic analysis questions?

Forms of Media Analysis  Analysis of media form and genre  Technological/media effects determinism  Critical political economy  Mass and public media  Cultural studies  Sociotechnical systems approach  Future forecasing

Media form and genre  Analysis of essential elements – e.g., McCloud’s first chapter on “what is comics?” and six-step model (to be discussed end of month)  Attempts to define classificatory boundaries and identifies canonical and ideal type constructions (why?)  Little consideration of consumer/producer impact – culture often deliberately left out (e.g., Manovich, which we’ll look at near the end.)  More on genre construction next week

Media effects determinism  Media as pervasive causal force  Often done with reductionist scope (e.g., X media consumption causes Y social effect - hard to prove since most connections aren’t really as simple as X->Y (examples?)

Qualified media effects model  Two-step process – X causes Y through intermediating factor Z  Cultivation theory – pervasive media exposure causes Y – not one example of X but prolonged sustained exposure to X  Examples?

Critical political economy  More of an economic determinism model – capital, relations of power and ownership structure determines media  Often Marxist based, but libertarian/capitalist models may also qualify (e.g., critiques of public broadcasting)  Often similarly reductionist – does everything boil down to simple financial considerations?

Public v. Mass Media (Mills)  Localized cultural practices  Horizontal power structure  Relatively equal ratio of leaders/followers  “Jack of all trades”  Global culture, with little individuation  Centralized power structures  Few leaders, many followers  Specialization and division of labour

Implications for Media Form  Mass media for mass audiences in mass societies  Quantity of eyeballs as basic economic force in private media markets  Mass media as central bonding experience  Mass media as centralized cultural control

Demassification  Rise of the postmodern / postindustrial / information age  Individuals and localized communities reemerge and gain in importance  Media as tools of creation and expression, not simply passive channels of reception  Examples?  Problems?

Cultural Studies  Analysis of media in context of use – producers, consumers alike  More about the complexity of interactions among stakeholders in particular contexts vs. precise measurement or investigation of global principles  Interesting stories, but are they generalizable? (not scientifically, but transferable, perhaps)

Sociotechnical Systems  Media as sociotechnical system - less cause/effect than mutual causation, driven by technical and social change  Emergence of industrial society and its effect on the shaping of communication forms  Radio as example – a potentially decentralized medium of production was rationalized into a mass medium

Future forecasting  Often the interest is not what’s now, but what’s next  Planning for future changes could lead to higher ROI on technical investment  Example: Productivity paradox in IT - early invesments in technology did not yield significant results – why? What changed?  Issues with forecasting?

McLuhan - Laws of Media  An attempt to find a universal dynamic of media change (!)  A bit of a departure from his more famous works which are broad (and sometimes rambling?) cultural studies approaches, and/or accessible pieces (e.g., Medium is the Massage w/Quentin Fiore)  Represented as tetrad - four intersecting simultaneous influences  Grouped into two forces - ground (historical/cultural convention) and figure (emergent forces/media)

Four Forces of Tetrad  Enhancement (positive change, amplification)  Retrieval (recovery of past forces – e.g., what’s old becomes new again)  Reversal (new or resurgent challenges jeopardizing new media – e.g., unintended consequences)  Obsolescence (erosion of older values/forces; e.g., what is made less relevant)  Again, all operate in concert simultaneously – one does not necessarily trump others

Examples of Tetrad Analysis  /concept.html /concept.html  Best way to learn this one is practice – take a medium and unpack it using the four elements

In-class assignment: Do a tetrad analysis  Pick a medium, any medium  What are the figure elements (enhancement/reversal)?  What are the ground elements (retrieval/obsolescence)?

 Media genre analysis Next week…