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Cultural studies. Kellner’s outline and McChesney’s critique. Kellner outlines a three-pronged approach to understanding media. Production and political economy Textual analysis Audience reception and use of media culture. Kellner’s reason for cultural studies.
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Cultural studies Kellner’s outline and McChesney’s critique
Kellner outlines a three-pronged approach to understanding media • Production and political economy • Textual analysis • Audience reception and use of media culture
Kellner’s reason for cultural studies • “Radio, television, film and the other products of media culture provide materials out of which we forge our very identities; our sense of selfhood; our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality; and of “us” and “them.” • “The media are a profound and often misperceived source of cultural pedagogy”
“the gaining of critical media literacy is an important resource for individuals and citizens in learning how to cope with a seductive cultural environment.” • Cultural studies has an “intrinsically critical and political dimension” • “Multiculturalism affirms the worth of different types of culture and cultural groups”
Production and political economy • Reviews the political and economic structures of a society and their impact on the cultural artifacts produced and circulated • Less (though not un-) interested in reception • “study of political economy can help determine the limits and range of political and ideological discourses and effects”
Textual analysis • “The products of media culture require multidimensional close textual readings to analyze their various forms of discourses, ideological positions, narrative strategies, image construction, and effects.” • Semiotics • Many types of study
Textual analysis • “Each reading of a text is only one possible reading from one critic’s subject position, not matter how multiperspectival, and may or may not be the reading preferred by audiences.” • However, limits to “polysemic nature of any text”
Audience reception and use of media culture • “All texts are subject to multiple readings depending on the perspectives and subject positions of the reader.” • Ethnographic research • Active meaning-making by audience members • Communities of interpretation
Audience reception and use of media culture • Danger of “romanticizing the “active audience” • A tendency to celebrate resistance per se • Tendency to ignore class, political economy • Madonna?