CCT 300: Critical Analysis of Media

1. CCT 300: Critical Analysis of Media Class 2: Mass and New Media Analysis

2. Introduction • In pairs: • What did you do this summer? • What do you expect to gain out of this course? • What do you want to be doing in five years? • Name one issue of contention or controversy involving media (mass or new…)

3. Media Analysis • Analysis of media form, genre • Technological analysis and determinism • Critical political economy • Cultural Studies

4. Brainstorming Genre • What defines a genre? • How can we break down definitions to increase analytical precision? • What benefits exist in doing so? To whom? And when do we hit a point of ridiculousness in doing so? • What genres exist?

5. Principles to consider.. • All media forms can be classified into genres (some deliberately or inadvertently bridge or mix forms) • All media forms involve technology (in the broadest sense of the word) • All media have economic, political and cultural consequence • Holistic understanding of media systems leads to a more grounded, less biased understanding

6. Mass/Public Media & Society • C. Wright Mills backgrounder • Institutionalization of mass society and its shaping of mass media (sociotechnical system)

7. Localized culture 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 Public v. Mass

8. Implications for Media Form • Mass media for mass audiences in mass societies • Competition for amount of eyeballs, media as big business • Mass media as central bonding experience • Mass media as centralized cultural control structure

9. 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 • Examples?

10. Society and Media as STS • Sociotechnical systems - not technologically determined or socially shaped, but a mix of the two forces operating concomitantly • In this case, does mass culture drive the formation of mass media? Or, is it the other way around?

11. Manovich • Language of New Media - distilling the core essence of new media forms into eight propositions (a good example of media genre analysis for the Wiki?) • More of a technological determinism approach, although does look at social and economic factors • N.B. “New Media” is not a chronological distinction (although newer examples are more likely to be “new”)

12. New Media vs. Cyberculture • Proposes a distinction - new media studies as studies of new cultural forms and structures vs. the social use (e.g., gaming culture, digital divide issues) • Is this a clear distinction?

13. New Media as Distribution • Looks at new media explicitly as channel - mediated through digital transmission, in whatever form • Is this useful? Three limits noted - a) media forms change b) are changing towards network distribution and c) is there any common ground b/w computer mediated forms, anyway?

14. New Media as Software Controlled • Use of data structures, modularity, automation to create the cultural form • Digital photography/video as example; due to common technical standards for coding and manipulation, media objects can be manipulated (sometimes automatically) with ease • Other examples - e.g., embedded Google content

15. Cultural conventions • Uneven development - just because you can represent and manipulate something in digital form doesn’t mean it will work will in practice (e.g., film) • “morph” or “composite” - earlier conceptual models survive transition to new media (e.g., desktop metaphor vs. alternatives)

16. Aesthetics of New Media • New media technologies create their own established aesthetics • Example: DV movies and cheaper amateur production (http://48hourfilm.com/) • Builds on previous models, however - e.g., Quicktime vs. Kinetoscope

17. New Media as Efficient • Computing technology executes various tasks considerably faster - e.g., 3D animation, composite photography • Efficiency opens up new possibilities and phenomena (e.g., DIY photo/video editing)

18. New Media as Metamedia • New media repurposes old media, combines existing media sources (e.g., photo montage, web mashing, music sampling) • Not new, just qualitatively different (and more efficient) than previous uses (e.g., 1920s avant-garde)

19. New Media as Nexus of Art and Computing • Computing becomes a more right-brain, creative process - a tool to represent and create new realities vs. simply crunch numbers (although there’s lots of that still required…)

20. McLuhan - Laws of Media • Universal dynamic of media change • Represented as tetrad - four intersecting concomitant influences • Grouped into two forces - ground (historical/cultural convention) and figure (emergent forces/media)

21. Four Forces • Enhancement (positive change, amplification) • Retrieval (recovery of past forces) • Reversal (new or resurgent challenges jeopardizing new media) • Obsolescence (erosion of older values/forces)

22. Next Week… • Genre and its definitional elements • McCloud as example - and potential tools for analysis relevant to the first assignment