WEEK 1:
When did anxieties about media begin? * 18th century * Anxieties about the effect of gothic novels
Jane Austen * English novelist * Romantic fiction * Northanger Abbey
19th century * Emergence of mass media and growth in literacy
Famous ‘Red Barn Murder’ * Notorious murder committed in England * Maria Marten was shot dead by lover William Corder * Arranged to meet at Red Barn before eloping to Ipswich * Killed there and Corder fled, continuing to send letter to Martens family claiming she was in good health * Body was found after step mother had a dream about the murder * Story provoked numerous articles in newspapers, songs, plays, film
The myth of effect
Lumiere Film * Lumiere brothers were the first filmmakers in history * ‘L’Arrivée d’un train au Ciotât’ 1895 – French film directed by Louis Lumiere
Anxieties about the new mass audience
Every new media form
Inspires anxieties about its possible negative effects
The dystopian view * July 1995 * Negative view of the future of society and humankind * Technology deteriorates the everyday life of human beings and ruins civilization
Inspires hope about its positive role in society
The utopian view * Sketches a future in which technology improves the everyday life of human beings and advances civilization
Transmission model
Hypodermic needle theory (HNT) * Implies that the media has the power to inject highly influential messages directly into passive and susceptible audiences * The audiences have no other sources of information by which to compare the medias messages, they have no choice but to act on those messages * AKA Magic Bullet Theory
Assumptions of the HNT * Humans react uniformly to stimuli * Medias message is directly injected into the bloodstream of a population like fluid from a syringe * Messages are strategically created to achieve desired responses * The effects of the medias messages are immediate and powerful, capable of causing significant behavioral change in humans * The public is powerless to escape the medias influence
Alfred Bandura and the bobo doll * American psychologist * Advocate for ‘social learning theory’ * Based on a ‘behaviorist’ concept of human psychology * Conducted a series of ‘laboratory’ experiments to demonstrates the social learning of aggression * Taken by many as ‘proof’ that watching violence promotes violence * Anxieties about the ‘effects’ of the new mass media on the behaviour of children, youth, the uneducated, the working class
Cultivation theory * American communications scholar, George Gerbner, undertook ‘content’ analysis of television shows from the 1960s to prove * That exposure to violence is cumulative in its effects * That violence on the screen ‘cultivates’ violence in society * But what else contributes to violence in society
Gerbner
* Children’s cartoon films are especially violent * Violence a characteristic form of handling conflicts * Two-thirds of all leading characters in TV drama are involved in violence, half committing violence themselves * More characters are shown as victims of violence than as aggressors * Only 8% who commit violence escape retribution * No painful effect is shown in over half of all violent episodes
The murder of Jamie Bulger 1993 * Blaming the media for teaching children violence and aggression * Jamie was murdered at age 2 * Abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten year old boys * Stole boy from shopping center, mutilated his body on train tracks * The ten year old boys motives were derived from family dysfunction, poverty, alcoholism, marital breakdown, neglect, bullying * Exposure Child’s Play (chucky) has striking similarities to the murder of James Bulger
WEEK 2:
Semiotics
* The science of signs * Origin in linguistics and the study of meaning
Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Peirce * Semiotician * Fathers of semiotics/semiology together * Concept: sign/signifier/signified
Every sign
Sign
* Anything that coveys meaning
Signifier
* Things that give meaning (word/image)
Signified
* What is evoked in the mind (mental concept)
Denotation and connotation
Denotation
* Literal meaning * What is there?
Connotation
* Associations connected with a certain word/image * What you take from it?
Myth
* Roland Barthes * Dominant ideologies of our time * Justification through statement of fact * Extended metaphors
Marilyn Munroe
Denotation
* Photograph of Marilyn
Connotation
* Star qualities * Glamour, sexuality, beauty * Depression, drug taking, death
Myth
* Sign of activating the myth of Hollywood * Dream factory that produces glamour in the form of the stars it constructs/dream machine that can crush them * Profit and expediency
Ideology * System of ideas and ideals * Set of beliefs characteristic of a social group or individual * ‘The way in which we imagine the word to be’
The ‘Nationwide’ audience 1980
David Morley
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Charlotte Brunsdon 