Corporate Media, Regulation and Taking Back The Media

In the readings below you can find a good summary of the ideas that we have been debating in class around the organization of media systems, their ability to serve the public good and the resistances to regulation. Many of you have encountered these ideas in your other media studies classes but this is as good a moment as any to go over them in the systematic manner in which these readings do. LINKS ARE NOW FIXED

McChesney, Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy
Sanders, "Why Americans Should Take Back The Media"
Spence et al, "The Business of the Media and the Business of the Market"
Anthology of articles from The Future of the Media

Bonus: After yesterday's screening follow this link and take the BBC's Silvio Berlusconi Birthday Quiz. After all it was his birthday yesterday. Then you can watch Lloyd Kaufman on media consolidation below.

New Media: Gaming

Pac-Man Skull

These are two articles on videogames and their history. Use them in conjunction with the screening of Game On: The Unauthorized History of Video Games screened in class.

Bolter & Grusin, "Computer Games" (from Remediation)
P. David Marshall, "Playing Game Cultures: Electronic Games"

Super Mario 25th Anniversary

Media Law and Codes of Ethics

Here is the link for Poynter's Online Media Law short course. The readings on media reform will be posted tomorrow evening. Below you can also find two Codes of Ethics, one for Journalists and one for Marketers. Please be ready to discuss these in class on Tuesday along with the other readings.


The Poynter course is at: http://tinyurl.com/39ejw9x
Journalism Code of Ethics: http://tinyurl.com/ylfb554
Marketers Code of Ethics: http://tinyurl.com/yktg9pq

Text and Context: Political Economy & Reception

Janice Radway, "Women Read The Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context"

Jan Nederveen Pitersem, "White Negroes"
David Croteau & William Hoynes, "The New Media Giants: Changing Industry Structure"
Sut Jhally, "Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture"

EXTRA READING: Stuart Hall, "Encoding-Decoding"

Opening of last night's 2011 Emmy Awards: "To men, you're womanish, to women, you're mannish."

Textuality: Semiotics

To complement the other readings, here are three different discussions of 'semiotics' and semiotic analysis and their use for cultural studies and the analysis of media representations. These are not required readings if you have encountered 'media semiotics' before. I would however suggest, to those of you who are encountering 'semiotics' for the first time, to treat these readings as required readings: your work in class, your ability to grapple with the other required readings and your final project would certainly benefit from a familiarity with the concepts presented here.

Mieke Bal, Semiotics for Beginners
Scott McCloud, from Understading Comics: Chapter 2, Semiotics
Jonathan Bignell, Media Semiotics: Introduction + The Cinema

Cultural Studies and Representation: Race and Gender I

Power, Privilege and Discrimination

Peggy McIntosh, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"

Cultural Studies & Representation
Douglas Kellner, "Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism and Media Culture"
Sanjukta Gosh, "'Con-Fusing' Exotica: Producing India in US Advertising"

Ideology and Hegemony
Stuart Hall, "The Whites of Their Eyes: Racing Ideologies and the Media"
James Lull, "Hegemony"

all readings are from Dines and Humez (eds), Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text-Reader; 2nd Edition(Sage, 2003)

'New' Media: Impact of Digital Technology on Film and Television

These are the readings for the first weeks of class and discussion. Remember that we are still in the process of investigating the concept of 'new' media and trying to go beyond a mere chronology of new technologies in favor of a more nuanced and specific understanding of the truly 'new' aspects of digital converged media and the social potential/consequences from a politically progressive perspective --the 'what's new for society' question.

The articles here will introduce you to some of the more practical transformations that the appearance of digital technologies have produced in 'old' media like film and television. Please note that as we discussed in class, even in this case, the transformations are both smaller and larger than those one could imagine: on the one hand, the film and televisual experience is for the most part unchanged; on the other, however, the film medium and the specificity of the photo/cinematographic image has been dramatically transformed as it loses its indexicality and the medium goes from a synthetic to an analytic one while television's horizon ceases to be that of a regulated/national context to an open/transnational one.

David Croteau & William Hoynes, "The New Media Giants: Changing Industry Structure"

Sean Cubitt, "Digital Filming and Special Effects"
P. David Marshall, "Rejuvenation: Film in the Digital World"
Anne Friedberg, "CD and DVD"
Janet Wasko, "The Future of Film Distribution and Exhibition"

Michele Hilmes, "Cable, Satellite and Digital Technologies"
P. David Marshall, "Rejuvenation: Television"

Welcome To Fall 2011

De-Stalinization = De-Regulation?: Eastern European Mass Media

Articles on the passage from the state/party controlled monopolies of Eastern European nations to the commodified systems post-1989. Everyone should read these articles as background for preparing their presentations.

Kevin Williams - "The Media in Eastern Europe"

from European Media Studies
Splichal, "From State Control to Commodification: Media Democratisation in East and Central Europe"
Sparks & Reading, "Re-regulating Television After Communism: A Comparative Analysis of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic"

European Mass Media: Deregulation, Commodification and Neo-Television

Here are a number of articles to think through some of the more specific issues on the paradigm shift in European Broadcasting during the 1980s and 1990s and the consequent shift toward deregulation and privatization. The Ginsborg and Hibberd articles are specifically on the 'Italian case'. The articles by Umberto Eco and Raymond Williams are two theoretical and critical reflections on the aesthetic repercussions of liberalization on both programs and audiences. Relate these readings to our screening of Maurizio Nichetti's The Icicle Thief (Ladri di Saponette).

Humphreys, "The 'New Media' and Broadcasting Deregulation in Western Europe"

Williams, "Public Service and the Deregulation of European Broadcasting"

Paul Ginsborg, "The Making of a Television Empire"
from Ginsborg's Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power, Patrimony (Verso, 2005)

Matthew Hibberd, "Conflicts of Interest and Media Pluralism in Italian Broadcasting"

from Bull & Rhodes, Italy: A Contested Polity (Routledge, 2009)

Umberto Eco, "A Guide to the Neo-Television of the 1980s"

Raymond Williams, "Programming: Distribution and Flow"

from Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form (Routledge, 1990)

This just in:

From this week's The Economist, an article on Italy with an eloquent title if there ever was one: "The Man Who Screwed an Entire Country". Find the editorial here.

Please note that The Economist is the most respected European business weekly whose stance on economic policy can only be characterized as fanatically pro-business and pro-capitalism --in short the magazine is regarded as predominantly very conservative.

I point this out primarily to underline how basic thinking on the role, function and values of the mass media --particularly of the press-- manages to cross ideological lines. This puts the so-called Italian anomaly into perspective as an issue which is ultimately a populist and bipartisan one and not tied to specific ideological perspectives.

National Cinemas, Art Films, American Friends and Cultural Imperialism or, What's Wrong With A Cowboy in Hamburg?

What's wrong with a cowboy in Hamburg?
"The Americans have colonized our subconscious" (Wenders in "Kings of the Road")

Readings for this week's discussion on the concept of National Cinema, the Art Film and Wim Wenders' Der Amerikanische Freund (1977)

Bordwell, "The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice" from Poetics of Cinema
Elsaesser, "American Friends: Hollywood Echoes in the New German Cinema"
Jarvie, "Free Trade as Cultural Threat: American Film and TV Exports in the Post-War Period"

Here is a mainstream review of the film from everyone's favorite middle-brow film critic, Roger Ebert.

'Free' or 'Pirate' Media?

Below is Hans Magnus Enzensberger's "Constituents of a Theory of the Media" where he discusses the concepts of 'emancipatory vs. repressive uses' of the media while offering a radical critique of traditional progressive conception of public/state media in favor of the 'new media' potentials of 'free' media. Hesmondalgh's article is a general reflection on the concept of alternative media, it's organization and the specific textual production.

Roger Chapman's article is a comparative analysis of the two main British 'pirate' radio stations, Radio London and Radio Caroline and how they differentiated themselves on the basis of their attitude to commercialism and their mission.

Finally John Downing writes on 'radical media' in Italy covering a number of activist situations and their use of new communication technologies by political movements during the late '60s and early '70s. This last article will be the clearest contextualization of Marco Tullio Giordana'sI Cento Passi.

Something to think about in relation to I Cento Passi is how Peppino Impastato's attempts at carving out a space for communication and direct political action (a public sphere within the confines of a small community dominated by organized crime and their ties to the political realm) is dramatized in the film --from traditional political rallies to 'free radio' after navigating dadaist street theater, pamphleteering, film screenings and be-ins. Think specifically of the characteristics of RadioAut --programming, control, voice, 'mission', etc.

Hesmondalgh, "Alternative Media, Alternative Texts?"
Enzensberger, "Constituents of a Theory of the Media"
Chapman, "The 1960s Pirates: A Comparative Analysis of Radio Caroline and Radio London"

Downing, "Radical Media in Italy" from Radical Media

Public Service Broadcasting: Ises and Oughts

Here are the final readings for this week. Concentrate your reflections on the concept of PSB (public service broadcasting), it's features, criteria and justifications.

from Humphreys, Mass Media and Media Policy in Western Europe
Chapter 3: Press Concentration in Western Europe
Chapter 4: European Public-Service Broadcasting System

Richard Collins, "'Ises' and 'Oughts': Public Service Broadcasting in Europe"
from Allen & Hill (eds), The Television Studies Reader (Routledge, 2004)

European Societies and Media Culture

from Humphreys, Mass Media and Media Policy in Western Europe
Intro + Chapter 1: Press Freedom: The Free Market and the Development of the Modern Press
Chapter 2: Press Freedom and its Limits: The State, the Law and the Private Individual

from Williams, European Media Studies
Chapter 1: The European Media Landscape
Chapter 2: The Press in Europe

Welcome To Summer I 2011

Welcome to Summer I: for this session the blog is exclusively dedicated to the CMS 315 European Mass Media class. Please check back often to find readings, bits of information taken from the internet together with breaking news and current issues that we can use for class discussion.