Understanding M E D I A CULTURES Nick Stevenson Understanding M E D I A CULTURES Social Theory and Mass Communication Second Edition SAGE Publications London • Thousand Oaks • New Delhi © Nick Stevenson 2002 First published 2002 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. 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Printed in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press Ltd, Trowbridge, Wiltshire Contents Introduction 1 1 Marxism and Mass Communication Research 9 Debates within Political Economy and Ideology: Raymond Williams, Glasgow University Media Group and Stuart Hall Marxism, Political Economy and Ideology 9 Raymond Williams: Communications and the Long Revolution 11 Cultural Materialism and Hegemony 15 Raymond Williams and Material Culture: Television and the Press 18 Raymond Williams and Communication Theory 20 The Glasgow University Media Group and Television Bias 26 Two Case Studies: Bad News and Good News 26 The Eye of the Beholder and Objectivity in Media Studies 28 Ideology and the Glasgow University Media Group 32 Stuart Hall, Mass Communications and Hegemony 34 Policing the Crisis: the Press, Moral Panics and the Rise of the New Right 35 Ideology: the Return of the Repressed? 36 Encoding and Decoding Media Discourse 41 The Over-inflation of Discourse and Other Related Critiques 42 Summary 46 2 Habermas, Mass Culture and the Public Sphere 47 Public Cultures 47 The Bourgeois Public Sphere 48 Habermas, Mass Culture and the Early Frankfurt School 51 Problems with Mass Culture: Habermas and the Frankfurt School 56 Contents The Public Sphere and Public Broadcasting 62 Habermas, the Public Sphere and Citizenship 68 Summary 74 3 Critical Perspectives within Audience Research 75 Problems in Interpretation, Agency, Structure and Ideology The Emergence of Critical Audience Studies 75 David Morley and the Television Audience: Encoding/Decoding Revisited 78 Semiotics, Sociology and the Television Audience 79 Class, Power and Ideology in Domestic Leisure 83 John Fiske and the Pleasure of Popular Culture 89 Life’s More Fun with the Popular Press 92 Pointless Populism or Resistant Pleasures? 94 Feminism and Soap Opera: Reading into Pleasure 102 Feminism, Mass Culture and Watching Dallas 103 Psychoanalysis, Identity and Utopia 105 Reading Magazine Cultures 108 Feminism and Critical Theory 113 Summary 116 4 Marshall McLuhan and the Cultural Medium 118 Space, Time and Implosion in the Global Village Technical Media 118 Innis, McLuhan and Canadian Social Theory 119 The Medium is the Message 121 Space and Time: Technology and Cultural Studies 128 Oral, Print and Modern Cultures: Jack Goody and Anthony Giddens 132 More Critical Observations 138 Summary 146 5 Baudrillard’s Blizzards 148 Postmodernity, Mass Communications and Symbolic Exchange Postmodernism as a Heterogeneous Field 148 Baudrillard, Althusser and Debord 149 Postmodernism, Symbolic Exchange and Marxism 153 The French McLuhan: Simulations, Hyperreality and the Masses 162 Baudrillard and Jameson 167 Baudrillard’s Irrationalism 173 Summary 182 vi Contents 6 New Media and the Information Society 184 Schiller, Castells, Virilio and Cyberfeminism Herb Schiller and Media Imperialism 186 Informationalism, Networks and Social Movements: Manuel Castells 192 The Limitations of Informational Politics 196 Virilio, Speed and Communication 200 Virilio and the Media of Mass Communications 206 Critical Questions within Cyberfeminism 210 Summary 214 7 Conclusion 216 The Three Paradigms of Mass Communication Research 216 Possible Futures 223 Glossary 226 Notes 232 References 235 Index 250 vii Preface for the second edition The main aim of this new edition has been to revise and expand the text to take account of recent media theory and research, and the development of new media. Since the first publication of this book in 1995, there has been a great deal of fresh thinking in this respect. This has given rise to a considerable amount of debate as to whether society has now entered into an information age unlike any other. However we theorise this transition it has posed new and of course old questions within the sociology of the media. Not surprisingly those who are trying to think about the impact of new media have increasingly looked to developments in sociology and social theory to help them in this task. Hence the central aim of my book remains the same as it was in 1995. That is I attempt to demonstrate why a grounding in social theory remains key for the study of the media. This claim remains consistent whether we are talking of new or old media. Whether I successfully make this case remains for the reader to judge. There are a number of people I should like to thank for help in the preparation of the manuscript. Firstly, and above everyone else, I would like to praise my publisher Julia Hall. Without her vision and commitment this book would not have happened. Secondly, I would like to acknowledge my debt to a number of colleagues and friends whose conversations and insights have helped along the way. They are: Micheal Kenny, Anthony Elliott, Alex MacDonald, David Moore, Paul Ransome, Joke Hermes, Ann Gray, John Downey, Maurice Roche, John B. Thompson, Sharon MacDonald, Peter Jackson, Jagdish Patel, Gaye Flounders, Chris Docx, Chris Baber, Anthony Giddens, Andrew Gamble, Dave Hesmond- haugh, David Rose, Matthew Dickson, Robert Unwin, Jim McGuigan, Claire Annesley, and Kate Brooks. Finally, I would like to thank my partner Lucy James for putting up with my tastes in television, magazines, radio, newspapers, Internet, and cinema. While we remain divided on Radio One and Wim Wenders we have found solace in Ally McBeal. In addition, Lucy has devoted a considerable amount of time to reading through the chapters that are enclosed within. This book owes a great deal to her continual support. However, this new edition is dedicated with love to our daughter Eve Anna James. Nick Stevenson, Nottingham