mass-communication-theory

350 Section 4 Contemporary Mass Communication Theory
INSTANT ACCESS
The Commodification of Culture
Strengths Weaknesses
1. Provides basis for social change
2. Identifies problems created by repackaging of
cultural content
1. Argues for, but does not empirically demonstrate,
effects
2. Has overly pessimistic view of media influence
and average people
Although this can have positive benefits (see Chapter 5), media practitioners
can also use it to justify routine production practices while they reject potentially
useful innovations.
5. Disruption of everyday life takes many forms—some disruptions are obviously
linked to consumption of especially deleterious content, but other forms are
very subtle and occur over long periods. Disruption ranges from propagation
of misconceptions about the social world—like those cultivation analysis has
examined—to disruption of social institutions. Consequences can be both microscopic
and macroscopic and may take many different forms. For example,
Joshua Meyrowitz (1985) argued that media deprive us of a sense of place.
Neil Postman (1985) believes that media focus too much on entertainment,
with serious long-term consequences. He has also examined media disruption
in books entitled The Disappearance of Childhood (1994) and The End of
Education (1996). Disruption of childhood, as you saw in Chapter 7, is also
the focus of Susan Linn’s Consuming Kids (2004), Benjamin Barber’s Consumed:
How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens
Whole (2007), and Shirley Steinberg and Joe Kincheloe’s Kinderculture:
The Corporate Construction of Childhood (1997). Kathleen Jamieson (1988)
lamented the decline of political speech making brought about by electronic
media and, with Karlyn Campbell (1997), media’s corruption of the meaning
of citizen action. Michael Parenti (1992), in Make-Believe Media: The Politics
of Entertainment, also explores this theme.
ADVERTISING: THE ULTIMATE CULTURAL COMMODITY
Not surprisingly, critical cultural studies researchers direct some of their most devastating
criticism toward advertising. They view it as the ultimate cultural commodity
(Hay, 1989; Jhally, 1987). Advertising packages promotional messages so
they will be attended to and acted on by people who often have little interest in
and often no real need for most of the advertised products or services. Marketers
routinely portray consumption of specific products as the best way to construct a
worthwhile personal identity, have fun, make friends and influence people, or solve
problems (often ones we never knew we had). You deserve a break today. Just do
it. DewMocracy!
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