Welcome readers! This blog is written as a part of my third semester assignment in Paper No. - 205 Cultural Studies. In this blog, I will explore the topic 'Media Culture and Cultural Studies.'
● Name :- Hetal Pathak
● Roll No. :- 09
● Semester :- 3 ( Batch 2022 - 2024)
● Enrollment No.- 4069206420220022
● Paper No. :- 205
● Paper Name :- Cultural Studies
● Topic :- Media Culture and Cultural Studies
● Submitted to :- Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
● Email Address:- hetalpathak28@gmail.com
● Date of Submission:- 1st December, 2023
Media Culture and Cultural Studies:-
□ Table of Contents :-
- Introduction
● What is Cultural Studies
● Overview of Media Culture
-Theoretical Framework
● Media and Cultural identity
● Audience Reception and use of Media Culture
● Conclusion
Introduction :-
Media culture and cultural studies explore the intricate relationship between media and society. In this dynamic field, we investigate how media shapes and reflects our culture, influencing the way we think, communicate, and perceive the world around us. Cultural studies delve into the meanings embedded in media messages, considering how they impact individuals and communities.
Media or social media world nowadays is a reflection or we can say an imitation of the real world. Media reports each and everything which is happening around the world.it helps to understand what is happening around, right and wrong. And that's why Media is holding power. Media is able to affect people's thoughts as well as their emotions. And shape their mentality good or bad, just the way they want. Towards any particular area or person. Media has control over mass.
And that's why it is their humble responsibility to provide facts and information which is tested twice. But if we see nowadays the media also is in control of the government or politicians. So the media never dare to speak against them and provide information which is beneficial for them. For them it does not matter whether it is correct information or false. We can easily interpret that nowadays the media is not working for the audience but it is working for the people who are in power. Media itself is a power and works for power. And hide the news which are important to be seen.
Cultural studies is interested in the ways in which communication and community are linked. Communication is about language, discourse and representation. Advertising, Marketing and critique - are all features associated with Media. Media are technologies of communication, and therefore of meaning production and meaning - dissemination.
Media Studies and its role in construction of cultural values, its circulation of symbolic values, and its production of desire is central to cultural studies.
"Studying Media culture is not only to focus on the cultural aspects of any media but also paying attention to the economics of media."
What is Cultural Studies ? :-
Cultural studies, interdisciplinary field concerned with the role of social institutions in the shaping of culture. Cultural studies emerged in Britain in the late 1950s and subsequently spread internationally, notably to the United States and Australia. Originally identified with the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham (founded 1964) and with such scholars as Richard Hoggart, Stuart Hall, and Raymond Williams, cultural studies later became a well-established field in many academic institutions, and it has since had broad influence in sociology, anthropology, historiography, literary criticism, philosophy, and art criticism. Among its central concerns are the place of race or ethnicity, class, and gender in the production of cultural knowledge.
The word Culture is derived from the Latin word 'Colere' which means 'To cultivate', 'to honour' or 'to protect'. Culture is the mode of generating meaning and ideas which are valid within the culture. These meanings are governed by power, which means the culture is controlled by the elite class whereas non-elite's views are rejected. It denotes that in society, certain components of culture get more significant than others. As Patrick Brantlinger has pointed out that ;
Cultural studies is not "a tightly coherent, unified movement with a fixed agenda," but a "loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues, and questions."
Cultural studies read between these gaps of the culture. As Derrida points out binary oppositions in the theory of Deconstruction. Similarly cultural studies do the same. It looks at the mass culture. Cultural Studies is composed of elements of Marxism, Post-structuralism, Postmodernism, Feminism, Gender Studies, anthropology, Sociology, race and ethnic Studies, film theory, urban studies , Public policy, Popular culture studies and Postcolonial Studies. Those fields that concentrate on social and cultural forces that either create community or cause division and alienation. Cultural Studies was Influenced by Structuralism and Poststructuralism.
Cultural studies takes as its force the whole Complex of changing ideas, beliefs, Feelings, Values and Symbols that define a community's organisation and sense of itself. It is important to note here that ;
'When we study culture, we are studying the world we live in and how we function in it.'
Cultural Studies later became a well - established field in many academic Institutions, and it has since had broad influence in Other Fields like - Sociology , anthropology, literary Criticism and Philosophy. Among its Central Concerns are the Place of race or ethnicity , class and gender in the Production of Cultural Knowledge.
Media Culture :-
Media culture refers to the culture created under the influence of mass media. The concept of media culture infers its impact on society’s information consumption and intellectual guidance. Media culture tends to be a major factor in the formation of mainstream culture since it affects society’s opinions, values, tastes, attitudes and informational availability.
In today's world, Media becomes as essential as our daily needs. Media of today is playing an important and outstanding role in creating and shaping public opinion and strengthening society. Media influences society in a large way. It influences so many people's behaviour nowadays. The media can manipulate, influence, persuade and pressurise society, along with even controlling the world at times in both positive and negative ways.
Overview of Media Culture :-
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." Media images help shape our view of the world and our deepest values: what we consider good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil. Media stories provide the symbols, myths, and resources through which we constitute a common culture and through the appropriation of which we insert ourselves into this culture. Media spectacles demonstrate who has power and who is powerless, who is allowed to exercise force and violence, and who is not. They dramatise and legitimise the power of the forces that be and show the powerless that they must stay in their places or to be oppressed.
We are immersed from cradle to grave in a media and consumer society and thus it is important to learn how to understand, interpret and criticise its meaning and message.
'The media are a profound and often misperceived source of cultural pedagogy.'
Consequently, the gaining of critical media literacy is an important resource for individuals and citizens in learning how to cope with a seductive cultural environment. Learning how to read, criticise, and resist socio-cultural manipulation can help empower oneself in relation to dominant forms of media and culture. It can enhance individual sovereignty vis-a-vis media culture and give people more power over their cultural environment.
Through a set of internal debates, and responding to social struggles and movements of the 1960s and the 1970s, the Birmingham group came to focus on the interplay of representations and ideologies of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality in cultural texts, including media culture. They were among the first to study the effects of newspapers, radio, television, film, and other popular cultural forms on audiences.They also focused on how various audiences interpreted and used media culture differently, analysing the factors that made different audiences respond in contrasting ways to various media texts.
'For cultural studies, media culture provides the materials for constructing views of the world, behaviour, and even identities. Those who uncritically follow the dictates of media culture tend to "mainstream" themselves, conforming to the dominant fashion, values, and behaviour. Yet cultural studies is also interested in how subcultural groups and individuals resist dominant forms of culture and identity, creating their own style and identities.'
Cultural studies show how media culture articulates the dominant values, political ideologies, and social developments and novelties of the era. It conceives of U.S. culture and society as a contested terrain with various groups and ideologies struggling for dominance (Kellner 1995). Television, film, music, and other popular cultural forms are thus often liberal or conservative, or occasionally express more radical or oppositional views.
A critical cultural studies- embodied in many of the articles collected in this reader thus develops concepts and analyses that will enable readers to analytically dissect the artefacts of contemporary media culture and to gain power over their cultural environment.
Media and Cultural identity :-
Media plays a big role in shaping how we see ourselves and others. Imagine it like a mirror reflecting our culture. When we watch movies, TV shows, or read news, it influences our beliefs and values. For example, if a certain group is always shown in a certain way, it can create stereotypes.
Media can also bring cultures together by sharing traditions and stories. But sometimes, it might overshadow smaller cultures with dominant ones, leading to a loss of identity. So, the media is like a storyteller that can either celebrate diversity or unintentionally blur it. It's important to be aware of this impact on cultural identity.
Mass media are media of communication such as the printed press, cinema, radio, and television that address large and diverse audiences. Cultural identity refers to a set of qualities attributed to given populations, often thought of as static but which change through time. Mass media have played a key historical role in shaping national cultures and therefore a range of cultural identities.
Cultural identity is not an only collection of thoughts, beliefs, traditions, languages and behaviours accumulated through time. Rather it is a cultural selection on how to respond to an outside stimulant in various time frames. Both printed and electronic media without a doubt has had a significant influence on the individuals and cultural identity. Joshua Meyrowitz (1985) argues that ;
'The media contributes to social change by being the missing link between culture and personality.'
The fact is evident that cultural identity and Media are correlated and interconnected phenomena these days, where Media are a source of transformation of new and modern ideas, development of human capital and information, but on the other side they are a threat to the socio - cultural environment in the context of identity.
Media culture clearly reflects the multiple sides of contemporary debates and problems. It is for this reason that any reading of the media must always be a political reading. Media culture helps reinforce the hegemony and power of specific political, cultural and economic groups. The representation in the media are :-
Suggestive
Provocative
This means they suggest ideologies that the audience, if not alert, imbibes. Media culture does not need to declare its position or ideology openly : it only needs to suggest. Showing a film star guzzling coke in a film, or using particular brands of clothing is not necessarily a marketing strategy for the product. But what it does is to suggest that stars wear certain kinds of clothes, and that their glamour is in part the effect of the clothes.
Media Culture is provocative because it sometimes asks us to rethink what we know, or reinforce what we believe in. Thus the portrayal of Pakistan as a 'Terrorist state' in Hindi films reinforces the political and social image of Pakistan by raising our anger levels at the injustices of Pakistan's army ( but remains silent on any human and civil rights violation by the Indian army in Kashmir).
Audience Reception and use of Media Culture :-
Cultural Studies is interested in the ways in which audience receive the message , how they respond to it, and the effects that the message generates. That is why A major component of cultural studies is the audience or reception studies. Reception is the use of mediated cultural texts by the audience.
All texts are subject to multiple readings depending on the perspectives and subject
positions of the reader. Members of distinct genders, classes, races, nations, regions,sexual
preferences, and political ideologies are going to read texts differently, and cultural studies can illuminate why diverse audiences interpret texts in various, sometimes conflicting, ways. It is indeed one of the merits of cultural studies to have focused on audience reception in recent years and this focus provides one of its major contributions, though there are also some limitations and problems with the standard cultural studies approaches to the audience. A standard way to discover how audiences read texts is to engage in ethnographic research, in an attempt to determine how texts effect audiences and shape their beliefs and behavior. Enthnographic cultural studies have indicated some of the various ways that audiences use and appropriate texts, often to empower themselves.
Media culture provides materials for individuals to create identities and meanings and cultural studies detects uses of cultural forms. Teenagers use video games and music television as an escape from the demands of a disciplinary society. Males use sports as a terrain of fantasy identification, in which they feel empowered as "their" team or star triumphs. Such sports events also generate a form of community, currently being lost in the privatized media and consumer culture of our time.
This emphasis on audience reception and appropriation helps cultural studies overcome the previous one-sided textualist orientations to culture. It also directs focus on the actual political effects that texts have and how audiences use texts. Audience research can reveal how people are actually using cultural texts and what sort of effects they are having on everyday life. Combining quantitative and qualitative research, new reception studies, including some of the essays in this reader, are providing important contributions into how audiences actually interact with cultural texts.
Thus, while emphasis on the audience and reception was an excellent correction to the
one-sidedness of purely textual analysis. But, in recent years cultural studies has overemphasised reception and textual analysis, while underemphasizing the production of culture and its political economy. To sum up, Media effects are complex and controversial and it is the merit of cultural studies to make their study an important part of its agenda.
Conclusion :-
To Conclude, Cultural Studies focuses on media culture because it assumes that Media are very significant contributors to ideologies and political culture. Media and culture are in correlation. Media culture makes oppressive conditions of class and gender and often the economic angle to cultural ideologies of the family or the law.
References :-
“Cultural Studies: Interdisciplinary Field.” Encyclopedia Britannica, web.archive.org/web/20170801182053/https://www.britannica.com/topic/cultural-studies. Accessed 27 Nov. 2023.
Kellner, Douglas. Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, and Media Culture , pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/culturalstudiesmulticulturalism.pdf. Accessed 27 Nov. 2023.
Khan, Salman. “Media Impacts on Culture Identity.” Academia.Edu, 15 Oct. 2016, www.academia.edu/29167165/Media_Impacts_on_Culture_Identity.
Nayar, Pramod K. An Introduction to Cultural Studies. Viva Books, 2011.
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