Transcript Critical Approaches to Digital Media – DMST 5230

Critically Thinking about
Digital Media
Basic Media History
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Gutenburg
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Movable type, c. 1439 (before? … )
Newspapers / magazines
Telegraph (1844) / telephone (1876) /
photograph (1839)
Radio (1895) / television (1800s / early
1900s) / cable (1940s) / satellite (1960s)
Vacuum tubes / transistors / integrated
circuits / computers
New media are associated
with…
A shift from modernity to
postmodernity
 Intensifying globalization processes
 A replacement (in the West) of an
industrial age of manufacturing by a
post-industrial information age
 A decentring of established and
centralized geo-political orders
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How are the media
changing?
Institutions
 Constant flux of ‘new media’
 Ideological connotations of ‘the new’
 Inclusive – ‘interactive media’ …
‘computer mediated communication’
… virtual reality … non-linear
communication …
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Discussion
How is each made?
 Why is each made?
 How is each distributed?
 What role do you have in the
communication process?
 How would these products be
different if you lived in –China? –
Saudi Arabia? -Cuba?
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Communication Context
Theories and Models (paradigm)
 Relationships and Power
 Economics
 Nature and Nurture
 How can you evaluate a system in
which you are intricately involved?
 What is real? How do you know?
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Shannon’s (1948) Model
Mediated Communication
Interactive Communication
A Transactional Model
Critical / cultural study
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Ideological analysis
Narrative Analysis
Semiotics
Cultural analysis
Political economy
Psychoanalytic theory
What are theories and models?
What is a myth? Scientific method?
Quantitative vs. qualitative study
Analysis of media content
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Newspapers
Magazines
Tabloids
Blogs
Video games
Radio programming
TV programming
Online video (YouTube, Hulu, etc.)
Assumptions
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You already have done some media
analysis
Being critical
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stand back from the hype and investigate the
nature of change
Not reduce everything to being capitalist
scams
Not assume everything has changed; not
assume nothing has changed
Knowing some of the important scholars…
Marshall MacLuhan
(1911-1980)
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His work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of
the study of media theory.
McLuhan is known for coining the expressions
"the medium is the message" and the "global
village”
The subject that would occupy most of
McLuhan's career was the task of understanding
the effects of technology as it related to popular
culture, and how this in turn affected human
beings and their relations with one another in
communities.
Raymond Williams
(1921-1988)
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One of the first in Britain to develop the
discipline of Cultural Studies
Tried to understand literature and related
cultural forms (including media) not as
the outcome of an isolated aesthetic
adventure, but as the manifestation of a
deeply social process that involved a
series of complex relationships
Evaluated relationships between ideology
and culture, and the development of
socialist perspectives in the
communicative arts
Vannevar Bush
(1890-1974)
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Many consider Bush to be the Godfather
of our wired age, often making reference
to his 1945 essay, "As We May Think."
Bush described a theoretical machine he
called a "memex," which was to enhance
human memory by allowing the user to
store and retrieve documents linked by
associations.
This associative linking was very similar
to what is known today as hypertext.
Others…
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Gottfried Leibniz (math, logic, philosophy)
Charles Babbage (invented first mechanical computer)
Alan Turing (father of computer science and artificial intelligence)
Ted Nelson (hypertext)
Roland Barthes (structuralism, semiotics)
Bill Gates? Steve Jobs? Jaron Lanier?
Tim Berners-Lee?
Who else?