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All lecture notes of Media Theory

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Media Theory

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Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)

This document contains all lectures from the course called Media Theory. My grade for this course was an 8,8. Good luck!

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1. Samenvatting - Media theory, all seminar notes.
2. Samenvatting - Summary of all media theory texts year 1
3. College aantekeningen - All lecture notes of media theory
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Week 1: introduction/medium

What is theory?
- A supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one
based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.
Like Darwin’s theory about the evolution

Nomothetic Ideographic

Aims at generalizations and formulation of Aims at understanding the meaning of
laws. contingent, unique , and often cultural or
subjective phenomena.

Natural sciences Humanities

“Water boils at 100 degrees C” “How were property relations organized in
Ancient Greece?”

From observations to general law Theory as a toolbox (foucault)

Theory as falsifiable (Popper)

What the given examples show:
- Theory encourages and inspires discussion and debate
- Theoretical debates are ongoing, and encourage more theorizing
- Theory is (often) deliberately provocative
- Purpose is often to challenge common-sense thinking: “Making the ordinary
extraordinary”
- Theory is a process
- Your role is to engage in that process

Types of theory:
- Theory as falsifiable vs theory as a tool
- Descriptive (this is how the world works) vs critical (what is wrong with the world, how
the world should be) - see also administrative vs critical theory (Lazarsfeld)
- Endogenous (from within the discipline) vs exogenous (interdisciplinary influences)
media theory

Theory comes out of a national, political, or economic context and this context often
influences the theories. But also be aware of the travelling of theories and productive cross-
pollination.

What is a medium?
Williams:
There has probably been a convergence of three senses:

- (i) the old general sense of an intervening or intermediate agency or substance;
- (ii) the conscious technical sense, as in the distinction between print and sound and
vision as media;

, - (iii) the specialized capitalist sense, in which a newspaper or broadcasting service -
something that already exists or can be planned - is seen as a medium for something
else, such as advertising.

It is interesting that sense (i) depended on particular physical or philosophical ideas, where
there had to be a substance intermediate between a sense or a thought and its operation or
expression. In most modern science and philosophy, and especially in thinking about
language, this idea of a medium has been dispensed with; thus language is not a medium
but a primary practice, and writing (for print) and speaking or acting (for broadcasting) would
also be practices. It is then controversial whether print and broadcasting, as in the technical
sense (ii), are media or, more strictly, material forms and sign systems (Williams, Keywords,
204)

→ It juxtaposes with McLuhan

McLuhan:
Several approaches retain the broader definition of a medium as “an intervening substance”.
A medium is anything that makes a connection so that communication becomes possible.
“The content of any medium is always another medium”.

Core ideas of the toronto school of communication theory:
- key argument: communications systems and technologies structure our individual
psychology and our culture/society.
- Emphasis on the form and function of media communication, rather than the
content.
- (Trans)historical research: comparing different eras/periods and formulate general
principles. (Normally, when we have regulation of media it is at the level of content
like no porno, so there is a moral panic around content)
- Conclusion: communication technologies are the engine of socio-historical change.
→ In other words: Our inventions reinvent us.

Innis’ “Bias of communication”
Every medium is biased with respect to time and space:

“The concepts of time and space reflect the significance of media to civilization. Media that
emphasize time are those durable in character, such a parchment, clay and stone. The
heavy materials are suited to the development of architecture and sculpture. Media that
emphasize space are apt to be less durable and light in character such as papyrus and
paper. The latter are suited to wide areas in administration and trade. The conquest of Egypt
by Rome gave access to supplies of papyrus, which became the basis of a large
administrative empire” (Empire and Communications)

→ society’s which use these different media, it will create different types of society.

McLuhan “the medium is the message”
- We should always attend to the changes brought about by the particular form and
features of media technologies.
- “societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which
humans communicate than by the content of the communication.”

, - “the ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern
that it introduces into human affairs.” (Like Innis was saying)

Media as extensions of man:
- Each medium has its own specific effects on our behaviour, thinking, and sense
perception - these are extended (it extense these senses).
- Anything can be a medium: TV, radio, book, but also car, clocks, glasses, etc..
(because they are extensions of man)
- Modern Western culture, like earlier/other cultures, is shaped by media and
communication technologies. However: unique is that our media are electronic (vs
the mechanical media of old)
- Instantaneous and global in reach: the world as a “global village”

Media create all-encompassing “environments” in which we live:
- “Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge
of the way media work as environments”.
- “the present is always invisible because it is environmental. No environment is
perceptible, simple because it saturates the whole field of attention.”
- Parallel to Heidegger’s tool-being: technology and objects have the tendency to
withdraw from our consciousness - they become invisible, transparent.

McLuhan’s “laws of media” (1988)
- Media effects are “law-like”
- These laws of media are more like natural laws than judicial laws (descriptive not
prescriptive)
- This asks for an “exact science” of media & culture (a pure nomothetic approach)
→ (Is this still critical?)

Week 2: Technology

Question from last week, the answer: ideographic approached do not falsify (like with
nomothetic approaches) other theories but you use them as an inspiration and you check it
with the case you are analysing.

Five approaches:
Technological determinism: Marshall McLuhan & Toronto school (50’s-70’s)
Technological determinism is an approach. It is not a good thing. It is probably the most
common sense way of thinking relation between technology and society. In this period there
was a sudden rush to explain societal changes/phenomena through technologies.

Basic claim of the book: The Great Stirrup Debate (1962)
- Feudalism: The legal and social system that evolved in W Europe in the 8th and 9th
centuries, in which vassals were protected and maintained by their lords, usually
through the granting of fiefs, and were required to serve under them in war
→ It is being caused by disturb
- Summary of the book: The introduction of the stirrup. This makes possible the
mounted knight (knight on a horse who can remain sitting on him). You have different
way of war, importance of cavalry increases. To sustain this kind of cavalry you need

, a reorganisation of land, which leads to new classes. And at least leads to
Feudalism.

technological determinism is a reductionist theory which claims that technology determines
the shape of society (like the stirrup leads to feudalism)
- Social structures and moral/cultural values are thought to be determined by
technology.
- There are strong and weak versions: 1) direct and unilinear impact. 2) Mediation
through societal features but nevertheless having a causal relationship.

Technology (technology is dropped and changes society) → (new) Societal form

McLuhan as a technological determinist:
“In the mechanical age now receding, many actions could be taken without too much
concern. Slow movement insured that the reactions were delayed for considerable periods of
time. Today the action and the reaction occur almost at the same time. We actually live
mythically and integrally, as it were, but we continue to think in the old, fragmented space
and time patterns of the pre-electric age”

Technological determinism is ingrained in popular speech (such as when we talk about FB
or Twitter)

Criticism of technological determinism:
- Reductionist
- Simplistic (it reduces a complex phenomena to one cause)
- The strong version cannot explain why technology does not lead everywhere to the
same result. (The technology should cause something everywhere, like the stirrup
should cause the same in Asia)
- It is ahistorical and essentialist (It reduces the complexity of an history, ity does not
take into account the different histories) (essentialist: they say that it is one thing)
- The weak version pays more attention to historical specificity, but nevertheless
separates technology from society

Cultural materialism (cultural studies):Raymond Williams
- Influenced by Marxism (the materialistic approach from Marxism)
- Materialist approach: all cultural production takes place under particular material
constraints and that these constraints will shape and mold what is possible and limit
what is possible.
- Societal power relations are key concern
- Content of media is not discarded but it is
situated within a material context
- Society and its cultural forms affect how we use a technology in a particular time and
place – and how it develops over time
- A technology has no essence (because it changes over time)

Case study: history of television
- 19th century industrial capitalism ( → created better places to live in),
characterized by mobility, rural exodus and scaling up. For Raymond
Williams this is really the core event that causes everything that happens
next. Several (communication) technologies are invented to solve
operative problems (You cannot make every product in your own country):
electricity, telegraphy, telephony, photography, …

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