1. Critical Approaches to Communication Theory
Tara Wilkinson

2. Critical tradition
Critical theorists challenge three features of contemporary society.
The control of language to perpetuate power imbalances.
The role of mass media in dulling sensitivity to repression.
Blind reliance on the scientific method and uncritical acceptance of empirical findings. 
Seeks to understand the taken for granted systems, power structures, beliefs, ideologies that dominate society, with a particular focus on whose interest are served by those power structures
Interested in uncovering oppressive social conditions and power arrangements in order to promote emancipation or freer and more fulfilling society
Make conscious attempt to fuse theory and action.

3. Critical tradition - Communication
Interested in how messages reinforce oppression in society
Focus on discourse and texts that promote particular ideologies, establish and maintain power and subvert the interest of particular groups and classes.
Communication is not separated from the overall system of oppressive forces
Who does and does not get to speak, what does and does not get said

4. Variations in critical tradition
Marxism
Frankfurt School of Critical Theory
Postmodernism - Cultural Studies
Poststructuralism
Postcolonialism
Feminist Studies

5. Marxism Original branch of Critical Theory.
Karl Marx argued that the means of production determine the nature of society.
In capitalist systems, profit drives production, a process that ends up oppressing the labour of the working class.
Only when the working class rises up against dominant groups can the means of production be changed.
Marxist Critical Theory argues that the language of the dominant class makes it difficult for working class groups to fully understand their situation.
Work of Marxist Critical Theorists to create new forms of language that expose the dominant ideology.

6. Frankfurt school Largely responsible for the label ‘Critical Theory’
Inspired by Marxism, but the failure of the working class movements, lead many members to abandon their belief in the proletariat as the agent of change in favour of intellect and reason.
Criticised for elitism.
Refers to group of German scholars – Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno
Associated with the Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt 1923

7. ‘post’ critical tradition
Marxism & Frankfurt School fall within a modernist paradigm
Marxism - Reliance on individual as agent of social change
Frankfurt School - Reliance on reason established through science
Break with modernity – Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, Postcolonialism
Plurality and instability of meaning
Distrust of the scientific
Questioning of grand narratives

8. postmodernism Originates in 1970s
Characterised by break with modernity and the enlightenment project
Jean-Francois Lyotard
Rejection of grand narratives
Jean Baudrillard
Separation of signs from referents
Lyotard & Baudrillard call into question traditional notions of reality
Cultural Studies is most often associated with postmodern variation of the critical tradition

9. Cultural studies
Originates in the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birmingham, 1964
Interested in the dominant ideologies in culture
Focus on social change from the vantage point of culture itself
Emphasis on marginalised concepts – gender, race, age, sexuality
Populist in orientation in contrast to the intellectual bias of Frankfurt School

10. poststructuralism Attributes to Jacques Derrida, 1966
Reject modern interest in universal truths, narratives, methods and meanings by which to know the world
Rejection of universal meaning determined by structuralist constraints, conditions and unstable symbols
Advocate a historical and social approach to nature of the world and the human being
Interested in differences
Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard

11. Postcolonial theory
Study of all cultures affected by the imperial process from colonization to present day.
Colonising, creates ‘othering’ which is responsible for stereotypical images of non white peoples
How cultures create identities after colonization?
The use and misuse of knowledge about colonised peoples
Creative ways colonised/formerly colonised people respond to their oppression

12. Feminist studies
From movements to secure women’s rights to efforts to end all forms of oppression
Early studies focus on the sex/gender division
Current studies question gender categories all together
See gender as an ongoing performance on a dynamic and fluid continuum.
Seek to understand ways that women and other marginalised groups are kept from full participation in the public sphere