MEDIA THEORY SUMMARY
Roadmap: Philosophy, theory and method………………………………..…4,5
- Metaphysics, axiology, epistemology
- Bazin’s Ontology of the moving image
- Kantian ethics and Nietzschean nihilism
- Empiricism and rationalism
- Foucaults power/knowledge
- Nomothetic/ideographic
Lecture 1: Media Theory………………………………………………………….6,7
- Mills and Barlow
- Descriptive vs critical theory
- McLuhan: extension, media ecology, laws of media
- Toronto School of Communication Theory
- Innis: ‘bias of communication’
Lecture 2: Close Reading McLuhan…………………………………………….8,9
- Electric/mechanical technology
- Narcissus
- Auto-amputation, numbness, sense ratio’s
- Extension of men
Lecture 3: Technology……………………………………………………………..10-13
- Technological determinism (McLuhan)
- Cultural materialism (Raymond Williams)
- SCOT (Wiebe Bijker)
- ANT (Bruno Latour)
- Race critical codes (Ruha Benjamin)
Roadmap: Culturalism………………………………………………………….13,14
- Williams: ‘a whole way of life’
- The structure of feeling
- Encoding/Decoding (Hall)
- Reception theory
- Burden of representation
- Audience studies (Ang)
- Fan studies (Jenkins)
Lecture 4: Close Reading Williams and Benjamins………………………….14,15
- Mobile privatization
- History of uses of TV
- One-to many/many-to-many
- Operational and broadcast communication
- Everyday coding
- Anti black box
- Beyond techno-determinism
Roadmap: Structuralism…………………………………………………………15 - 17
- Semiotics (signi er and signi ed)
- Critical theory (Frankfurt School)
- Feminist perspectives
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, Lecture 5: Identity…………………………………………………………………..17-19
- identity as construction
- Orientalism
- Stereotypes
- Unthinking Eurocentrism
Lecture 6: Close reading Said, Shohat & Stam………………………………..20-22
- De nition of the Orient
- Stereotypes and representation
- Burden of representation
- Limits of stereotypes
Roadmap: Post-Structuralism…………………………………………………….23-25
- Post modernism: simulacra, parody
- Intertextuality (pastiche)
- Linda Hutcheon
- Deconstruction (derrida)
- The Postal/ Di érence
- Post colonial studies (Bhabha, Spivak, Dyer)
- Glissant
Lecture 7: Reality……………………………………………………………………25-29
- realism and cinema
- Holywood realism vs neo-realism
- Bazin: realistic ontology of the lm
- Photography as optical and chemical technology
- The preservation of life by the representation of life
- Krakauer about lm
- Reality as Simulacrum (baudrillard) : Disneyland
- Successive phases of images
- Simulacrum: hyper real
- Baudrillard and tv, cynical nihilism and social media
Lecture 8: Close Reading Bazin, Baudrillard & Morris………………………..29-33
- Bazin’s Ontology of the moving image
- Jean Baudrillard : Simulacre and simulation
- Borges map
- Simulation in di erent elds
- Hyperreal: deterrence machine
- James Morris: social media, fake news, transcendence of reality,
- Partisan media, data driven news
Roadmap: New Materialism………………………………………………………33,34
- Bruno Latour ANT
- Deleuze rhizome : society of control
- Donna Haraway Cyborg Manifesto
Lecture 9: Relationality……………………………………………………………34-36
- Negritude/ Creolite movements
- Transparency and opacity in language (re-conceptualizing identity)
- Critical opacity: Celia Britton (axiology and epistemology)
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,Lecture 10: Close reading Glissant, Rhee & Britton…………………………37-42
- Victor Segalen
- Anti-Drone wear
- For opacity
- Paranoid thinking/ surveillance
- Partial visibility
- Fog war
Lecture 11: Power…………………………………………………………………42-47
- Thomas Hobbes
- Power (distribution) according to Hobbes
- Zero-sum game
- Max Weber: power models
- Micheal Foucault: Sex, subjects
- 18th century: ‘secularization’ of pastoral confession
- Adorno and Horkheimer: The Culture Industry (problem)
- Marx critique of industrial capitalism
- Telefonen vs Radio
- Satisfaction and desire
- Individuality as illusion
- Critiquing the critique of Culture Industry
Lecture 12: Close reading Foucault, Adorno & Horkheimer, Andrejevic…47-52
- Repressive hypothesis
- Discursive explosion
- Confession
- Scandalous literature
- Secularization
- Jouy anecdote
- Dialectics: Aufhebung
- Standardization, di erentiation
- Media as stutters of imagination
- Style as a mere gimmick
- Satisfaction
- Promise of interactivity
- Foucaults panopticon
- Savvy scepticism
- Latteral monitoring
- Room raiders
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, Roadmap: Philosophy, Theory and Method
Philosophy
= The fundamental study of the nature of:
- Reality (metaphysics) - What is real?
- Value (axiology) - What is right?
- Knowledge (epistemology) - How do we know?
1. Metaphysics (Reality)
• Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (Philosophy of the humanities)
• Perception of reality
• Ontology = the essence of life, being, nature - What is a ladybug? What constitutes a human?
- The ontology of the photographic image by Andre Bazin (1950s)
- Neorealism —> the essence of lm and photography is to re ect the world as it is (realism)
- Blow-up (1966) - Michelangelo Antonioni: murder was caught accidentally on camera
- Marshall Mcluhan: The essence of electronic media is that it connect people all over the world,
turning the world into a global village.
- Friedrich Kittler: A computer is in its essence a data processing machine that transfers
everything it is fed into bits and bytes.
2. Axiology (Value)
• Aesthetics Values :
- What is beautiful? What is value in art?
- Emotions and senses
- Plato about art: its a copy of a copy and cannot hold any value or truth.
- David Hume: appreciation of art is a matter of taste that can be developed. The more you know,
the more you can judge and value.
- Immanuel Kant: considered beauty as a property of the artwork itself.
• Ethical Values:
- What is good behavior? What is a good life?
- Choice, free will, responsibility
- Moral principals: wright and wrong/good and bad
- Kant: an action is good if the intent behind it is good. Free to choice its own actions.
- Friedrich Nietzsche (nihilism): life has no aim. Humans cannot be trusted to have good
intentions. To live is to su er, to survive is to nd some meaning in the su er (embracing
absurdity of existing).
3. Epistemology (Knowledge)
• Knowledge = a justi ed, true believe based on evidence
• Empiricism = claims based on observations, sense perception and experiences
• Rationalism = claims based on pure reasoning, ideas and thoughts
• Fake news: tools to nd out what is true and what not are bringing up philosophical questions
about reality, value and knowledge.
• Michel Foucault: knowledge is power.
- social knowledge systems (schools, hospitals, government, family, social media) have power to
move people. (Think about corona regulations).
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