COMS 360 Mass Communication

1. COMS 360Mass Communication Mass Media and Cultural Studies Professor Jeppesen

2. popular culture • in 1964 the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was founded in Birmingham, England • generally seen as the beginning of cultural studies, the study of contemporary popular culture, including: • activities of leisure time and entertainment • intersections of high art and mass culture • relation between power and knowledge • potential of cultural practices to anticipate and work toward social change Professor Jeppesen

3. popular culture • popular culture is generally speaking contemporary • based on emergent forms of culture • there is a sense of newness, trends, the latest thing Professor Jeppesen

4. popular culture • popular culture can either challenge or extrapolate from conventions or traditions • can come from underground or rebel cultures • can derive from changes in dominant culture Professor Jeppesen

5. popular culture • popular culture is often intended for or suited to the tastes, understanding or means of the general public rather than specialists or intellectuals • study of popular culture investigates how identities, social values, and meaning are constructed and how this plays a role in constantly shifting global power relations • examines the circuit of culture Professor Jeppesen

6. cultural materialism • comes from both anthropology and Marxism • anthropologists define it as the relationship between social life and material conditions • Marxists define it as the cultural production of meanings and values which use language and sign systems as a material form • culture is a field of mutually constitutive relationships among individual subjects, collectivities and creative and intellectual activities at all levels of society Professor Jeppesen

7. global perspective • cultural studies has also developed in many other global locations simultaneously, including the US, Australia, Europe, South-East Asia, South America and Canada • often linked to different fields of study or academic departments, including: English literature, sociology, anthropology, history, humanities, fine arts, media, or communication studies Professor Jeppesen

8. global popular culture • some new areas of study include: the body, the nation, the globalized city, public and private space, globalization and culture • the emphasis moves away from England and the US as the centres of interest • considers global circuits and practices of culture, including areas of study such as post-colonialism, diaspora studies, globalization of the film industry (e.g. Hollywood/Bollywood), global sex work, etc. Professor Jeppesen

9. the circuit of culture from Stuart Hall, Representation. Professor Jeppesen

10. representation • culture produces and is produced by a collective set of shared meanings (representations) and values (ideologies) • representation is the process by which we create and circulate meanings about the world we live in, through culture • language and image-based systems are crucial to the process of meaning-making Professor Jeppesen

11. representation & ideology • according to Louis Althusser, ideology is a “system of representation--composed of ideas, concepts, myths, or images--in which people live their imaginary relations to the real conditions of existence” • through representation, ideology constructs the individual as a social subject who accepts their role in society as ‘natural’ and inevitable • ideologies can be either reinforced or challenged by cultural representations Professor Jeppesen

12. representation & identity • we have seen that, through representation, ideology constructs the individual as a social subject • representations thus facilitate the construction of an identity for each social subject • identity has many axes, including: race, gender, sex, sexual orientation, class, family, nationality, citizenship status, global location, leisure activities, subcultural group, etc. Professor Jeppesen

13. representation - mimetic • the mimetic view of representation holds that there is a knowable world out there, and when we produce images or words about it, then we have clearly and truthfully represented it • representation thus is seen only to enter the field of culture once material objects or concepts have already been fully imbued with meaning Professor Jeppesen

14. representation - construction • cultural materialists and social construction theorists argue that representation is an important process in constructing social meanings that are then attached to things, concepts, etc. • thus culture consists of not just objects that reflect a neutral set of things or ideas, but processes which determine what those things or ideas mean within our society Professor Jeppesen

15. Chapter 6. Communications Law and Policy • Chapter 8. The Structure and Role of Ownership • Take-home test distributed (due the following week). next week Professor Jeppesen