Habermas
- Public sphere
- public space between private world, the state and the public where people form opinions
- source of public info
- communication between media companies and consumers
- MASS MEDIA IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST (DENNIS MCQUAIL)
- the media is held accountable for what they do
Curran and seaton
- BOOK = power without responsibility
- Liberal press
- media watchdog (CURRAN), media acts as a watchdog overseeing the government, most important function of the media
- commission (1949) expected to find that “the press as a whole gives an opportunity for all points of view”
- public service broadcasting (unresponsive to popular demand)
- broadcasting in Britain used to to be a monopoly/duopoly
- monopolies can be taken away selling one part of production (horizontal) or selling one from the same area (vertical)
- types of media ownership, CAPITALIST, feed people what they want them to think (private, money), PUBLIC SERVICE, let people make their own opinions (government, help public), CIVIL SOCIETY
Chomsky
- Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist.
- Book – Manufacturing consent : the political economy of the mass media (1988)
- “the political situation evolved by the political elite”
- “major media conglomerates control more and more of the world’s media”
- “the political an economic perspective has been adopted and primarily by left-wing critics and analysts”
- Making people believe something, planting ideas in their heads
- conglomerates have control over population
- media manipulates audiences by using a common enemy eg terrorist
- media companies frame a product in a certain way to make the public believe what they believe (FRAMING)
- the media creates myths to scare people into thinking something is going to happen
- power in economy over consumers
- eg election, placing ads to undecided to sway them in a certain direction
- Structures of ownership
- advertising
- Links with ‘The Establishment’
- Diversionary tactics – ‘flack’
- common enemy
Althusser
- interpellation
- ideological state apparatus ISA
- analyses from a social perspective
- issues of power control and ownership
Gramsci
- Hegemony
- Large media corporations manipulate ideas / change dominant ideologies to favour them
- telling people what’s true and not making people believe something they deem to be true when it actually isn’t
- using dominance to assert power over others to get across your point of view
HASMANDHAUGH
- British sociologist
- professor at Leeds uni
- (BOOK) ‘the cultural industries’
- “the organisational form of the CI has implications for conditions which creativity is carried out” (p99)
- “there must be concerns about this business driven agenda is compatible with quality of working life and well being in the CI”