Douglas Kellner. Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, and Media Culture. pgs. 9-20

Description:

• Media portrayals can positively shape our world and define our values, but can also reinforce negative or otherwise undesirable aspects of society. (pg. 9)
  

Analysis:

• Television, film, and music tend to give either liberal or conservative views, though extreme or oppositional views are occasionally seen. This serves to reinforce political homogeneity. (pg. 10)


• Ideologies can enforce domination and subordination, such as class ideologies celebrating upper-class life and degrading that of the working class, or gender ideologies promoting sexist representations of women. (pg.11)


• Because the majority of television and film are controlled by large corporations primarily oriented toward profit, these media outlets are dominated by genres that establish homogeneous systems and well-defined boundaries. (pgs. 12-13)
  

Vision:

• Cultural studies provide individuals and citizens with the means to productively analyze and criticize a media-rich environment, which enables them to resist socio-cultural manipulation and domination. (pg. 10)
  

Strategy:

• Studying the production and political economy of culture is the first step in cultural studies. This refers to examining how cultural texts are produced and inserted into mainstream culture (pgs. 12-13).
• The next step is textual analysis, which requires close examination of cultural texts using a multiperspectival approach (pgs. 14-15).
• Finally, studying audience reception to cultural texts allows one to examine how members of different societies react to texts (pgs. 15-17).

Clare D. Kelnner. "Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, & Media Culture."

Clare Duffy
September 7, 2007
WGS 220 Section 05
Kellner. “Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, & Media Culture.” p9-20.

Description:

· Media dictates mainstream culture, including values, behaviors, reactions to diversity (p10)


Analysis:

· All news controlled by few conglomerates (p13)
· Dominant readings come from entertainment (p17)
· Artifacts of media influence behavior (p17)

Vision:

· Cultural studies becomes multiperspectival through use of political economy, textual analysis, and audience reception (p18)

Strategy:

· Semiotics can discover hidden signs of dominant culture in media (p14)

Rachel S. Kellner, Douglas. Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, and Media Culture. Pg. 9-20

Kellner, Douglas. Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, and Media Culture. P. 9 -20

Description:
• The media affects all the different members of society through limited use of production and political economy, textual analysis, and audience reception and the use of media culture. (pg. 9)

Analysis:
• Individuals can interpret media by accepting the dominant views portrayed or by resisting those views and creating their own identities and interpretations. (pg. 10)
• The production and political economy aspect studies the well-defined rules within the ideological boundaries that different media codes must follow, such as sequelism and the cycle of genres. It also focuses on how the capitalistic views held by the corporate conglomerates that produce the media are depicted in the media. (pg 12-13)
• The textual analysis aspect focuses on the semiotics of the nonverbal codes presented by the media. It looks at how cultural meanings convey specific ideologies and how they fit in systems. (pg 14)
• The audience reception and use of media culture aspect focuses on how different audiences read texts and react to media in different ways. In recent years, however, these reception studies have had downfalls, in their likelihood to either downplay or exaggerate class distinctions in lieu of gender and ethnicity and their tendency to romanticize the "active audience." (pg 17).

Vision:
• These studies need to incorporate all of the different aspects in order to dissect the meanings, messages and effects of the dominant cultural forms to resist media manipulation and increase freedom and individuality. (pg 19)

Strategy:
• A multiperspectival approach with adapted cultural studies needs to be used to address the power of the media. (pg. 17)