CCT 300: Critical Analysis of Media

1. CCT 300:Critical Analysis of Media Class 2: Media Analysis

2. Administration • Lab work – will have time to catch up on first week’s lab, regular labs from now on • Adobe CS5 offer

3. Media Analysis • Analysis of media form and genre • Technological/media effects determinism • Critical political economy • Cultural studies • Sociotechnical systems approach

4. Media form and genre • Analysis of essential elements – e.g., today’s Manovich reading, McCloud’s first chapter on “what is comics?” • Attempts to define classificatory boundaries and identifies canonical and ideal type constructions • Little consideration of consumer/producer impact – culture often deliberately left out • More on genre construction next week

5. Media effects determinism • Media as pervasive causal force • Can be done intelligently – McLuhan did as much (and we’ll look briefly at that too) but often quite reductionist in scope (e.g., X media consumption causes Y social effect) • Objectively hard to prove since most connections aren’t really as simple as X->Y • Adaptations such as two-step model and cultivation theory try to qualify simplicity, but effects are complex to measure

6. Critical political economy • More of an economic determinism – capital and ownership structure determines media • Often Marxist based, but libertarian/capitalist models also qualify • Often similarly reductionist – does everything boil down to simple financial considerations?

7. 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)

8. 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

9. Public v. Mass Society (C.W. 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

10. 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

11. 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?

12. A worthwhile read… • Maich, S. & George, L. (2009). The Ego Boom: Why the World Really Does Revolve Around You. Toronto: Key Porter Books. • A (somewhat disturbing) look at You in an mediasphere increasingly shaped by mass customization and narrowcasting

13. Manovich’s LNM • Language of New Media - distilling the core essence of new media into eight propositions • More of a media form/genre definition • N.B. “New Media” is not a chronological term (although contemporary media are more likely to be “new”)

14. New Media vs. Cyberculture • Proposes a distinction - new media studies forms and codes vs. social effect (e.g., media use studies, cultural studies…) • Acknowledges cyberculture as interesting but a different field entirely

15. New Media as Distribution • Looks at new media explicitly as channel - digital transmission, in whatever form • Representation in digital form is increasingly common - examples? • Limitations of this approach?

16. 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 shared and manipulated (sometimes automatically) with ease • Other examples - e.g., dynamic web pages, Google AdSense

17. 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., digital actors?) • “morph” or “composite” - earlier conceptual models survive transition to new media and impact its form (e.g., desktop metaphor vs. alternatives)

18. Aesthetics of New Media • New media technologies create their own established aesthetics • Example: DV movies and cheaper amateur production (e.g., http://48hourfilm.com/), YouTube, vblogging, etc.

19. New Media as Efficient • Computing technology executes various tasks considerably faster - e.g., 3D animation, composite photography • Efficiency opens up new possibilities that were not present before

20. New Media as Metamedia • New media repurposes old media, combines existing media sources (e.g., photo montage, mashups, music sampling) • Not a new phenomenon, (e.g., collage, 1920s avant-garde film) but much easier done with digital objects

21. 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…)

22. Next week… • Media genres as defined by Agre • McLuhan’s Laws of Media