Personal Reflection on the Class

Well, where to start?

I think it's best for me to break this down by issues in the class.

Mediation:

I, personally, found the creation of wiki pages more useful than the rest of the assignments. I like to work as part of a group and develop an idea rather than work by myself. I also like the blog - it gives me a place to put my ideas without necessarily making them part of the text of everyone else's responses like Ning. With this class and how this semester is going, I'm incredibly paranoid that I'm not understanding the readings, but when I read other's comments I find that I'm actually on par. I think my paranoia goes down the more separate my ideas are, unless they're working directly with the ideas of others. I guess I don't like the "call and response" type of threaded conversation Ning provides. I also wish these were all in the same location.

Flow and Interruption:

This was obviously a problem for me in that I had personal interruptions in my work in the class (as evidenced on Ning and the wiki in particular). But I also think the flow of the class struggled because we took on huge topics each week (not a bad thing, mind) and each had posting to do, but when it came time for commenting on each other's work, we were limited by the time that they posted or by the time that we posted. I think to really flow, this class would have to have multiple due dates for the same posts so that people kinda "cycled through" an early turn-in date and a later one. I also think some more overlap in teh schedule between weeks would help - it seems that we often drop an author or issue when the readings change.

I'm not sure how I can prove that I've worked on this class since my big interruption - I'm not sure how to bridge the interruption and return the flow. I've been posting all my work on my blog. I feel ashamed for turning work in on Ning after everyone else, like I'm asking them to go back and give me feedback or like I'm chiming in out of sync in some horrible rendition of some horrible song, off-key and a beat behind.

Scope:

Any class that is titled "Media Culture" can be expected to have a very broad scope, but I found it odd that it was so "western" in thought. I think it'd be really interesting to look at works that really either come from other cultures or from a range of historical periods - like Plato's Phaedrus, or something - to develop a more historical and global understanding of media culture.

Representation:

I don't feel as though I can best represent my understanding of each of the readings and questions online. I felt more comfortable using Prezi or some other kind of representation for some of the ideas that felt so abstract - representing them visually or with other types of text really helped me.

Final Essay

Here is the text of my final essay:

Anne Coyle

Dr. Anne Wysocki

ENG 742: Media Culture

Final Essay

16 May 2011

Knowing All the Plots: The Relationship Between Audience and Mass Media

When Norma Desmond descended the stairs of her mansion, ready for her close-up, it was impossible to not draw parallels to the images and stories of fallen Hollywood starlets. Though Norma is fiction, her story is all too familiar to anyone who, even sixty-one years after the debut of Sunset Boulevard, is familiar with the machinations of the Western mass media. Joe Gillis, the everyman of the story, works with Norma in an attempt to develop a screenplay that might allow him to pay his bills and pursue his lady love. As those who have seen the film will know, he fails because Norma does not allow him to alter any of the script, which she jealously guards, deciding based on her perception of herself and her desires what the public should receive. The work is largely a commentary on the cult of Hollywood, with such memorable lines as: “We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!” (Wilder). How Sunset Blvd. conceptualizes the way Hollywood, as part of the mass media, works, is evident in exchanges between characters that discuss the role of the writer in producing content for the screen. Joe’s film about Okies and the Dust Bowl played out on a torpedo boat, as one example. Another example focused on the screenplay Joe and Norma are writing: Betty notes that “Oh, the old familiar story. You help a timid little soul cross a crowded street, she turns out to be a multimillionaire and leaves you all her money” and Joe replies “That's the trouble with you readers, you know all the plots” (Wilder). And readers do know all the plots.

Having the readers know all the plots seems counter-productive in a capitalistic system in which the marketability of programs is the primary concern of the business. However, as theorists Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, and later Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Jean Baudrillard find, reproducing the same material repeatedly works to influence the culture and consumptive behaviors of the masses. Mass media, even in the revelations the function of the system in Sunset Blvd., serve to control the interests of their audiences. How the masses function as either producers or consumers, and what their role is as audience, is the means to discovering how the mass media can be altered to function less as an industry reproducing a culture and more as an active exchange between all participants. Benjamin and Adorno and Horkheimer locate not what humans should be doing in their interactions with media, but instead focus on what they observe as human relationships with media. Enzensberger and Baudrillard, however, move from how media and humans negotiate the intersections of their interests and more on what they should be doing with technology and media. Through close analysis of the mass media theorists listed above, I explore the relationship between audience and mass media before developing a sense as to how the system can be challenged. As we have moved towards supposedly more participatory media in the digital age, it is important to locate the qualities that indicate a difference between passive reception of media and the active interaction that lead to genuine conversation and inclusion.

Walter Benjamin, writing from the middle of the Great Depression, identifies the shift between the medium though which sensory perception happens and historical circumstances. He states that “During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well” (Benjamin). To support this claim, Benjamin begins with a reflection on earlier works and traditions of art, identifying the qualities of the social institutions surrounding the works as well as to what purpose the works were put. Through his reflection of the language used to describe art, the functions of art, and the political systems and social behavior surrounding art, during different periods of time, Benjamin establishes a theory of art that focuses on the exchange of art between those who produce and those who consume. More specifically, he calls attention to the way in which art is consumed. Following the technological ability to mechanically reproduce works of art, the reaction of the masses changes, such as how “The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie. The progressive reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert. Such fusion is of great social significance. The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public” (Benjamin).

The enjoyment of the public, as well as their criticism, is dramatically altered by what Benjamin identifies as their ability to pay attention to the artifact. “The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested.” The constant changing, the movement of images and sound through movies is what disrupts the viewer’s ability to process the discrete elements of a film and “constitutes the shock effect of the film, which, like all shocks, should be cushioned by heightened presence of mind” (Benjamin). And, as Benjamin states, “Clearly, this is at bottom the same ancient lament that the masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration from the spectator.” But just as Benjamin notes that Marx’s criticism of the capitalist system began when the production system was in its infancy, Benjamin’s criticism of film may have overlooked how the mode of analysis changes with the mode of production and the mode of consumption.

Benjamin’s analysis of distraction and concentration states that these form “polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. He enters into this work of art the way legend tells of the Chinese painter when he viewed his finished painting. In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art,” rather than being absorbed by the work of art. Benjamin’s analysis of film focuses too much on the discrete elements, as though each individual frame, each sound were open to interpretation. However, even with painting, which he identifies as an art in which the audience concentrates, rather than becoming entertained and distracted, the audience does not grasp all layers and discrete elements, even when concentrating. He does, however, note that the distraction, while negative, works hand in hand with the exposure it provides to the masses; “The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one” (Benjamin).

What Benjamin assumes about the audience of mass media such as film is that they are passive in their reception of the artifact they consume. He assumes that the shock of constantly changing and moving images and sound overwhelms them. “The spectator’s process of association in view of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change. This constitutes the shock effect of the film, which, like all shocks, should be cushioned by heightened presence of mind,” but which Benjamin does not see in film. Passive audiences do not challenge that which they receive, but instead receive it in a state of distraction. But Benjamin does acknowledge that the masses become critics through the medium of film, because through the distance between the performance and the audience, the performer is unable to adapt to the audience. The audience becomes critical because the performance is unable to adapt appropriately to their reception. But while their “Reception in a state of distraction […] finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention” (Benjamin). If they become critics because they have a distance from the actor that isn’t present in theater, but they aren’t attentive, then they are simultaneously present and not present, critical and uncritical. Thus, the critical capabilities of the audience, the masses, is present but impotent.

Written before World War II, Benjamin’s analysis is less pessimistic of mechanical processes in media and reproduction than Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, I would argue precisely because it was written before the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis had not yet become common knowledge, though their Fascist aesthetic was prominent[1]. Their chapter “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” from Dialectic of Enlightenment criticizes the media and industry for creating the “culture industry”, which is “the achievement of standardization and mass production, sacrificing whatever involved a distinction between the logic of the work and that of the social system.” The goal of this system “forms part of the economic mechanism of selection. In addition there is the agreement – or at least the determination – of all executive authorities not to produce or sanction anything that in any way differs from their own rules, their own ideas about consumers, or above all themselves.” There is nothing outside of the system, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, because the system subsumes dissent by either silencing it, by refusing to disseminate it, or adopting it as part of the norm and adopting it to the existing structures and styles. Adorno and Horkheimer focus on the way the culture industry perpetuates its own interests through the dissemination of content designed to be consumed by the masses in predictable and scripted ways. As they say, “The man with leisure has to accept what the culture manufacturers offer him. [...] Its prime service to the customer is to do his schematizing for him.”

Like Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer note the “They [the mass media, in particular sound films] are so designed that quickness, powers of observation, and experience are undeniably needed to apprehend them at all; yet sustained thought is out of the question if the spectator is not to miss the relentless rush of facts.” The viewer is forced to passively observe the rush of relentless facts - if they were to think about what they were experiencing, they would miss the next experience, much like the shocks Benjamin noted. Unlike Benjamin, though, they point to the alertness required for the perpetuation of the mass media agenda. They note that “The entertainment manufacturers know that their products will be consumed with alertness even when the customer is distraught, for each of them is a model of the huge economic machinery which has always sustained the masses” (Adorno and Horkheimer). Benjamin saw this as distraction, rather than alertness. And in one way, they are all speaking to the same issue: alertness without thought is not far removed from distracted criticism. After all, the illusions of the culture industry leave “no room for imagination or reflection on the part of the audience, who is unable to respond within the structure of the film, yet deviate from its precise detail without losing the thread of the story; hence the film forces its victims to equate it directly with reality.”

Adorno and Horkheimer go farther than Benjamin in their criticism in the role of the audience in contact with mass media. Benjamin, who noted their passivity, did not go as far so to declare that “No independent thinking must be expected from the audience: the product prescribes every reaction: not by its natural structure (which collapses under reflection), but by signals. Any logical connection calling for mental effort is painstakingly avoided” (Adorno and Horkheimer). Here those who own the structure work to eliminate the thought that may challenge what is presented. Referring to the mid-1940s, they note that “Today, when the free market is coming to an end, those who control the system are entrenching themselves in it. It strengthens the firm bond between the consumers and the big combines” (Adorno and Horkheimer). And that bond is effective in keeping consumers roped into the system because “The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them” (Adorno and Horkheimer).

What Adorno and Horkheimer notice, but fail to account for, are alterations in the interaction between audience and media either based on the work of individuals that refuses to engage with the system or the progression of technology to disrupt the producer-consumer system. To them, all dissent is absorbed by the culture machine, all technological media are mass media in which the line between producer and consumer is jealously guarded. Benjamin recognized that as printing progressed technologically and became more prominent, readers increasingly became writers as well. He states: “For centuries a small number of writers were confronted by many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writers” (Benjamin). While he did not see this trend in film, he was writing from the early age of talkies, in which films with sound became increasingly easy to reproduce following the invention of filmstrip that could economically provide synchronized sound and image. The shift from the strict segregation of producers and consumers of mass media content is what Hans Magnus Enzensberger takes up in his essay “Constituents of a Theory of Media”.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger draws a distinction between older media, which he argues is non-communicatory, and new media, which allows for participation from the masses. Though his work was written long before what we conceive of as the newest, most recognizable participatory media, I believe the principles apply. Old media, according to Enzensberger, prevents communication that requires reciprocal action, much like Adorno and Horkheimer’s statements about the lack of response available in film. He states: “In its present form, equipment like television or film does not serve communication but prevents it. It allows no reciprocal action between transmitter and receiver; technically speaking, it reduces feedback to the lowest point compatible with the system” (262). In other words, without a response, or reciprocal action, it is simply delivering information, not communicating. The audience is restricted to the role of observer, which would allow the culture industry to continue to perpetuate itself without dissent that it couldn’t absorb.

One example of this is what Enzensberger points to as a common feature of nightly news shows on television. He describes the “Democratic Forum” portion of the news, in which "There, tucked away in the corner, 'the reader (listener, viewer) has his say,' which can naturally be cut short at any time. As in the case of public opinion polling, he is only asked questions so that he may have a chance to confirm his own dependence. It is a control circuit where what is fed in has already made complete allowance for the feedback" (Enzensberger 266). An easily recognizable type of interview that fits as a “Democratic Forum” segment is the “man on the street” interview, in which a reporter will ask targeted questions of the interviewee to later edit down to a shorter section that will actually air. In fact, editorial decisions could potentially eliminate dissention from interviews. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, originally published in 1988, explains that the American broadcast media form what they call a “propaganda model”, a variant of the culture industry offered by Adorno and Horkheimer. This model is described as “an analytical framework that attempts to explain the performance of the U.S. media in terms of the basic institutional structures and relationships within which they operate. It is our view that, among their other functions, the media serve, and propagandize on behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them” (i). Financing is very important, as Enzensberger’s examples show – if the media equipment that allows for the production and dissemination of content is expensive, only those who can afford them have the ability to produce. But if the equipment becomes cheaper, like contemporary smart phones, then more of the masses can become producers, thus providing the opportunity for consumers to become producers and pushing against the monopolistic propaganda model and culture industry.

Expense aside, the main feature that makes this reciprocal action possible is allowing for each party to become both a consumer and a producer. Enzensberger states “The technical distinction between receivers and transmitters reflects the social division of labor into producers and consumers, which in the consciousness industry becomes of particular political importance” (266). Essentially, the older forms of media that Enzensberger says restrict reciprocal communication and instead become lines of transmission do so by relying on the one way transmission of producer to consumer, but the consumer has no option to communicate in return. New media, according to Enzensberger, are more productive, allowing for material to be recorded and reproduced at will and for consumers to also function as producers. In this way, “The new media are oriented towards action, not contemplation; towards the present, not tradition” (265). And these new media should be social and “accessible to anyone” (265). And because these new media are defined by a structure that allows for the complication of the producer-consumer binary, “The contradiction between producers and consumers is not inherent in the electronic media; on the contrary, it has to be artificially reinforced by economic and administrative measures” (266). However, to believe that "Anyone who imagines that freedom for the media will be established if only everyone is busy transmitting and receiving is the dupe of a liberalism which, decked out in contemporary colors, merely peddles the faded concepts of a preordained harmony of social interests" (Enzensberger 267). The only way to effectively make use of new technologies that allow for the consumer to become producer and work against the interests of those who traditionally held power over mass media is to organize, according the Enzensberger, because new media demands interaction.

Enzensberger’s analysis is challenged by Jean Baudrillard, whose “Requiem for the Media” argues that Enzensberger gets caught up in a transmission model of communication. Revolution against the mass media, Baudrillard says, requires revolutionary models of communication, rather than agreeing to the function within the mass media’s communication model. Baudrillard points to the flaws of a producer/consumer transmission model and focuses on how such a model simplifies the message intended, reducing it to two-way transmission and not an exchange of genuine immediacy, in which "there are neither transmitters, nor receivers, but only people responding to each other. The problem of spontaneity and organization is not overcome dialectically here: its terms are transgressed" (286). While identifying an existing medium that fits this description is difficult, we can see how complicating the back and forth of the transmission model is when instead of a reciprocal action, there are multiple responses. Instead of allowing content to flow both ways in the media, Baudrillard is pushing for a media that allows responses from more than two parties in a way that requires a response from the parties – a continuing conversation among groups and individuals with the goal of producing genuine interaction. The transmission model, is as Baudrillard says, “This ‘scientific’ construction […] rooted in a simulation model of communication. It excludes, from its inception, the reciprocity and antagonism of interlocutors, and the ambivalence of their exchange” (285). And as he notes, using an example similar to the “Democratic Forum” Enzensberger describes, “On a more practical level, the media are quite aware how to set up formal ‘reversibility’ of circuits (letters to the editor, phone-in programs, polls, etc.) without conceding any response or abandoning in any way the discrimination of roles” (286). An endnote explaining this statement points out that “Underestimating the ability of the system to integrate its own revolutionary innovations is as delusory as underestimating the capacity of capitalism to develop the productive forces” (288). By integrating the revolutionary innovations as part of the system, Baudrillard identifies the absorption of dissent evident in Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis.

The audience, for Baudrillard, is not deprived of the technological means to interact as both producers and consumers, but is instead deprived of voice. He states “It is a speech that answers itself via the simulated detour of a response, and here as well, the absolutization of speech under the formal guise of exchange is the definition of power” (Baudrillard 281). The transmission model is based on the consumer participating in a system in which their response is either pre-determined or detoured by the apparatus of the system itself. Using the technology in the way in which it is prescribed merely perpetuates the existing order of the interests of mass media producers. The audience, by participating in the system designed to silence their voices, is silenced. Only by removing themselves from the transmission model and revolutionizing the function and structure of media can they overcome their technological laryngitis and challenge the authority of the existing homogenizing structure. It’s important to note that no one has any idea what such a system would look like, much less be able to identify it in practice, with the exception of Baudrillard’s example of graffiti. Graffiti, he says, responds immediately to the presence of media, responding against the design on the system by literally placing itself alongside or over the material to which it is responding. The saboteur becomes a full participant by refusing to participate in the role prescribed for him by the mass media. How this might look in other forms, though, is unknown.

Whether or not today’s digital media, the new media of production Enzensberger identifies, is actually allowing more consumers to become producers is only to be judged on the merits of interaction. It’s not enough to be able to write or create and disseminate that information, because according to Baudrillard, the same interaction takes place, reproducing the transmission model and perpetuating the culture industry. To refuse to be passive, to defy classification, to interact against the grain, is what humans should do to combat the culture industry and promote their own interests over the interests of those who have the power. Like poor Joe Gillis, the masses can hope that as producers, they can work “writing words, words, more words! Well, you'll make a rope of words and strangle this business! With a microphone there to catch the last gurgles, and Technicolor to photograph the red, swollen tongues!” (Wilder). But unless they act in the moment and respond outside of the system, the function as they have been told. Without dissent, there progress is arrested, voices are silenced, and the masses navigate media without reflection.

Works Cited

Adorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” Dialectic of Enlightenment. 1944. Web.

Baudrillard, Jean. “Requiem for the Media.” The New Media Reader. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. Cambridge: MIT, 2003. 277-88. Class PDF.

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Marxists.org. 1936. Web. Feb. 2011.

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. “Constituents of a Theory of Media.” The New Media Reader. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. Cambridge: MIT, 2003. 259-75. Class PDF.

Herman, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. 2^nd ed. New York: Pantheon, 2002.

Wilder, Billy, dir. Sunset Blvd. Paramount, 1950. Web.

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[1] See Susan Sontag’s Under the Sign of Saturn for a full description of the Fascist aesthetic.

The Post-Project Reflection

How was working on -- thinking through -- your project different from thinking through a seminar paper?

My project was easier for me to work through than my paper, not because I was more familiar with that type of composition, but because it helped me work through my ideas like I tend to in class conversations. It seemed like working with the text was like having a conversation with a partner or friend, like I was trying to explain my ideas without having to explain everything verbally.

How are you mediated differently through your project than through your seminar paper?

My project shows, rather than tells, what I'm trying to work out in my paper. It's almost as if I get to present my ideas they way they appear in my head - when I think of the video examples I want to use, I just use them - instead of having to fit them into the conventions of academic writing. I love writing, and I love academic writing, but this seemed much easier for me. It felt more fluid in general. Though, at the same time, I felt more restricted by my disability. When writing, I don't get caught up in my tendencies to try to make everything straight and symmetrical and I don't get distracted by videos. But I think overall it was a good experience.

I think I might start using Prezi as a tool to help me develop my arguments, to discover how things fit together, in the future.

What sorts of differing thoughts about your topic/area of interest arose for you because you approached this work through differing media?

Well, actually, focusing on how to design my project made me realize that structure and design were the areas I wanted to focus on in my essay. It made me more objective, I think, though I know my essay is still based on my own subjective experiences.

Reposting My Final Project

I don't know why, but apparently Blogger was having problems and deleted all posts between Wednesday night and this morning, which means that I have to repost this. Enjoy, again.

Final project!

Here's my final project.

Okay, scratch the link. Sorry about that - I'm not sure why it won't open for you guys. I thought I'd made it public, but here it is:

Revisiting Definitions

POST ONE
When you use "media" now, what do you understand by the term? What do
you understand by "mediation"? How do you understand technology relative
to media?

Media is, for me, what concepts/communication moves through between two thinking processes - whether these be individual minds or groups.

Mediation is the impact of the media on the concept/communication from as it was intended to how it was received. It doesn't have to be all negative - some of the intended communication comes through loud and clear, but some might be altered to a point where it becomes a misunderstanding.

Technology is the physical embodiment of media, or what is used to make media possible. This includes language, image, etc.

POST TWO
Imagine that you were to give a lecture on media culture to an undergrad
class. To work toward such a lecture, identify two or three repeated
themes that run through some majority of our class readings: in your
writing, identify the themes and trace each through the readings,
chronologically, identifying shifts and changes and contemplating why
there would be such shifts. Discuss why you chose the themes you did:
why does each theme stand out for you such that you think it should be
emphasized in a lecture to undergrads, and how should the theme shape
their thinking about (their engagements with) media?

I first tried to think of this as a sort of "tagging" by repeated issues or subjects that come up, but then I realized that for me to really "tag" it, I'd have to create a chart of sorts. But then I spent too much time pondering. Here's what I came up with:

I realized that some of these seem simple and some are more difficult to find within the texts, and that if I really wanted to, I could probably make inferences about all of these issues within the all the texts if I wanted to or if I had the time.

For undergrads, I'd focus on participation and the difference between the structure of technology and the development of technology, as well as the concept of "media" in general. I think that undergrads can best reflect on their interactions with media, which is largely participative (at least based on how many "friend requests" I've gotten from them or how many times I've caught them Facebooking in class). Also, so many of them seem to think that technology and media are without consequences and spring out of the ground like some sort of god-given gift for man. I'd like them to explore how things come to being and how their function impacts the society in which they are used.

POST THREE
What's missing? By this, I mean both "what's missing from the media
culture theories we have read?" and "what do you think is missing from
your understanding?" Look back over your media charts: what have our
readings encouraged you to add, shift, or resee since the beginning of
class -- and what do our readings not encourage you to discuss? What
questions about media are still left hanging for you, and where do you
see gaps in your own understanding of the work?

My understanding of everything feels so fragmented at the moment that I'm not sure if something's missing or if I personally missed it. It's a lot of work to play catch up and keep up when my brain is still so bombarded in every aspect of my life with some sort of drama or distraction. Oh, that's a four letter word for me - distraction - right up there with "focus".

Some areas I'd like to see more essays/articles about: mediation of the appearance of the body/body as mediation (beyond McLuhan!), subversion of the "norms" of conversation via media (Baudrillard and graffiti?), the place of media in public and private, more about online mediation ...

The readings have definitely encouraged me to think of the perspective of each writer as they analyze and philosophize and theorize about the way our world is altered and mediated. I would like to read more historical accounts (before Benjamin, are there any?) of expected impacts of technology.

Seminar Paper Draft

Anna Coyle

Dr. Anne Wysocki

ENGL 742: Media Culture

Seminar Paper DRAFT

17 April 2011

Something Something Labor, Rhetoric, and Media (Need Wit!)

On February 11^th, 2011, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker declared his intentions to introduce emergency legislation to fill a gap in funding in the state budget. The proposed law, as originally written, required Wisconsin public employees to pay more for their health care and pensions while also decertifying and essentially removing collective bargaining rights from public employees. While the reality of the so-called “budget crisis” has been called into question, the proposed law, which in its most recent form still removes collective bargaining rights, passed the legislature and was signed by the governor. What concerns this essay, however, is not the destruction of human rights in the United States or even the legality of the law’s passage. What concerns this essay is what happened between the February 11^th announcement of the proposed legislation and the passage of the bill on March 10^th. After tens of thousands of students, workers, and citizens took over the Capital Building, one of the primary concerns for union organizers was news coverage outside the state of Wisconsin. Several criticisms were leveled against the bias of national news organizations, most of whom either did not cover the story or covered the story by adding an institutional bias.

Media, when used as tools for dissemination of content, are shaped by the institutions or individuals that own them. In his chapter “Mass Media” in the book Critical Terms for Media Studies, John Durham Peters states “Typically mass media are the playthings of institutions. They are expensive to run, usually require distinct castes with specialized knowledge (scribes, programmers, ‘talent’) to operate them, and are of great strategic importance politically, economically, culturally, or otherwise” (277). The institutions that have the financial ability to run and attract specialized knowledge to operate them – in the case of the American media, these are major corporations – have access to a strategically multi-faceted media that can influence political, economic, and the cultures within which they operate. Peters continues: “Rarely in history have mass media operated apart from the central power sources of a social order, and they are typically under the management of the palace, the market, or the temple. Where mass media are, there is usually power”, power to represent content in a particular way through the media they control (Peters 277).

In this essay, I will explore how the conglomeration of the American broadcast media, in particular television news media, has influenced the coverage of the Wisconsin union protests. Next, I will discuss how the potential use of digital media, in particular social media, can serve not only for the dissemination of news specific to a particular cause, but also for actual union organizing and activism. (And if I have the space, which I probably won’t, I’d like to address the issue of net neutrality. Actually, I probably won’t have time to even get there, but I’d like to use this as an argument for net neutrality.)

As I am discussing the bias of broadcast media organizations, I feel it necessary to acknowledge my own bias in the example I provide. As a union organizer and public employee in the state of Wisconsin, I helped organize the protests at the Capitol Building and participated in the three-week-long occupation of the building and grounds. I continue to participate in protests and actions supporting a pro-union cause. I acknowledge my bias because I cannot pretend that my experiences do not drive my passion to write on this subject or my analysis of the event and its news coverage. However, I do feel my experiences give me insight into the direct implications of the events and media coverage and media-prepared content of that coverage in comparison.

Before continuing, it is necessary to delve into how the conglomeration of power both is structured and how it works. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, originally published in 1988, explores the focusing of power as the owners of broadcast media repeatedly consolidate and merge, leaving the American broadcast media dominated by a hegemony of nine, and later five, major corporations. Chomsky and Herman explain that the American broadcast media form what they call a “propaganda model”. This model is described as “an analytical framework that attempts to explain the performance of the U.S. media in terms of the basic institutional structures and relationships within which they operate. It is our view that, among their other functions, the media serve, and propagandize on behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them” (Chomsky and Herman xi). The nine major corporations that control and finance broadcast media at the time of publication of Manufacturing Consent’s second edition are Viacom, Disney, General Electric, AOL Time Warner (now just Time Warner again), News Corporation, Bertelsmann, Sony, AT&T, and Vivendi. These corporations have further condensed, leaving Disney, News Corp, Time Warner, Viacom, and CBS as the largest media corporations in 2010.

Chomsky and Herman claim that “Media centralization and the reduction in the resources devoted to journalism have made the media more dependent than ever on the primary definers who both make the news and subsidize the media by providing accessible and cheap copy” (xvii). Basically, the news the public receives is restricted by the interests of those who control the medium through ownership, power that is concentrated as the media outlets continue to merge. These corporations then define and make the news. And ultimately, these issues open the content of the media open to infection of hegemonic bias. Chomsky and Herman continue:

The representatives of these interests have important agendas and principles they want to advance, and they are well positioned to shape and constrain media policy. This is normally not accomplished by crude intervention, but by the selection of right-thinking personnel and by the editors’ and working journalists’ internalization of priorities and definitions of news-worthiness that conform to the institution’s policy. (xi)

The news-worthiness of potential content, then, is sifted through the ideological bias of the controlling organization. Thus the media can never, as long as driven by concerns based on market and economics, remain neutral. Issues that the public may care about are pushed aside as the concerns of the media interrupt the coverage of important events. The public would an explanation as to why they are “working harder with stagnant or declining incomes, have inadequate medical care at high costs, and what is being done in their name all over the world. If they are not getting much information on these topics, the propaganda model can explain why: the sovereigns who control the media choose not to offer such material” (Chomsky and Herman xix). The material I believe the “sovereigns who control media” chose not to offer in the case of my experience is the perspective of the unions and their members, in particular the concerns of the protests.

Paul Krugman, an economics professor who also writes op-ed pieces for The New York Times, called the mainstream broadcast media’s surprising lack of coverage “a virtual blackout on the huge demonstrations in Wisconsin, except on Fox, which portrays them as thuggish and violent”. Alternative news sources, primarily on the Internet or Comedy Central, covered the news of the Madison protests while questioning the message of Fox News and the near-complete blind spot on other networks. The Huffington Post, a privately owned, notoriously liberal online news source and Internet start-up, covered the controversial coverage of The New York Times. (Incidentally, the Huffington Post has just been acquired by AOL.) (Insert more here)

I can attest to the sense among union organizers that the mainstream media was ignoring the protest. Estimates of protesters range from some hundreds on the first day of the occupation, February 14, to a high of 100,000 on March 13^th (Richmond). While the news that the Capitol Building was being occupied by students and union workers made national news, it quickly faded into the newscape as the national news began to focus on the plight of Middle Eastern attempts to rebel against oppressive regimes.

…

Peters explains “Raw technology is probably less important than the ways it gets implemented and configured” (276). The media itself is neutral, but its use is not. It is, instead, influenced by the ideology of the creators and thus the organization that funds the production. Labor issues in particular are in opposition with the function of the broadcast media. Continuing with this claim, Peters states “The fact that mass communication has typically been studied in terms of few speaking to many (as with radio and TV) rather than many speaking to few (as in strikes, petitions, boycotts, protests) shows an ideological bias toward standing power: indeed there are many forms of mass communication in which senders, and not just receivers, are large collectives” (276). The labor movement itself, through the actions they undertake in their efforts to further their collective agendas, performs a sort of mass communication. But if their efforts are not broadcast through a media that provides regional or national coverage, their actions remain visible only to those who are directly affected by the actions, such as townspeople and other union members.

Because “Mass delivery has great diversity in time and space, scale and speed” the means of delivery depends on the media used to deliver the material (Peters 274). These “Means of delivery can unite audiences in time but scatter them in space (classical broadcasting, text-based diasporas); scatter them in time but unite them in space (the Internet, pilgrimage); unite them in both space and time (assembly); or scatter them in both space and time (writing and printing)” (Peters 274). In the case of the labor actions the means of delivery “unite [the audience] in both space and time” as an assembly. For the action to become publicized, including broadcast by the media, the action must appeal to the ideology of the corporation. If the action does, and it is publicized, it is scattered in space, reaching a larger audience.

How much of the audience receives the transmission is measured in different ways, depending on the media used to disseminate the news item. Broadcasting “ratings mechanisms have sought a statistical picture of audience behavior and size, with varying success. With Internet ‘cookies’, it is much easier to track what kind of engagements people have with remote environments, though the mystery of what happens at the other end of a sending still remains” (Peters 275).



(End of work so far) Woo-hoo. Below is the link to my essay draft.

Essay DRAFT Link