Communication and culture

Outline of chapter 13

•Raymond Williams has called it “one of the three most complicated worlds in the English language.
•At the broadest level we may speak of human culture, but more frequently we refer to national culture.
•Culture and Mass Media
Mass media as a main component of any nation’s culture
.For some, they are low cultural forms
.For others, they should be examined

•What is culture industries?
The term was coined by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer
In their 1947 work, Dialetic of Enlightenment , They defined the term as “products which are tailored for consumption, are manufactured more or less according to plan”
They believed that the real pupose of mass media was to provide ideological justification for the capitalistic societies where these industries developed.

•There are specific types of culture
Business has its own set of cultural characteristics
Any organization has its own culture that keeps people attached to it and allows members to identify with it
We all belong to multiple groups, each with its own characteristics culture, including shools, religious organizations, civic groups, and even neighborhood groups

Cultural Imperialism
“It is not individual practices we are blaming, but a contextualizing structure: capitalism, not just as economic
practices, but as the central positioning of economic practices within the social ordering of collective existence”
•Some Researchers conduct different studies to know the reaction of people on imported media
•Ethnographic Studies: It is conducted through observation of small samples and draw conclusions about what the relationships the researcher thinks a given behavior has with the consumption of imported media.
•Self Selected Sample: responses to an ad in a Dutch newspaper requesting information from people about why they like Dallas.
•Liebes and Katz study: most extensive empirical study, but it included only 40-80 people selected non-randomly from each community.

defending cultural autonomy

•Countries with large domestic markets for cultural products always have an advantage in films and television production because they are:
•able to charge less
•able to remain competitive with other exports
–Countries with low productions markets employ these strategies:
»Quotas
»Subsidies and Grants
»Regional alliances (co-productions)
»Adaptations of programs produced in other cultures
»Resistance measures

•Despite an international film and television market dominated by the U.S., people still tend to prefer their local cultures and local cultural products
•In India, Japan, Russia, and Brazil, 70-90% of television content is produced domestically
•Bollywood music and movies appeal to larger audiences, Indian and non-Indian alike, throughout the world
–Hollywood collaborates with Bollywood to make Indian-style films for Indian market
Music
•Germany has the world’s third largest music market after the U.S. and Japan
•About half of music sales in Spain is Latin American and Spanish artists and half of French music sales are to French artists
•Spanish/Latin music is also popular in U.S. pop culture

How is Media influencing Cultural Media
•It is possible for people to access global media
•People address only a particular ethnic, religious, political, linguistic, and racial interest
Result: We stop learning about others and focus only on ourselves and those who are like us

Fusion in the Media
•Roberston disputes the notion of media imperialism
– cultural messages sent from the U.S to other cultures are differentially received and interpreted according to the local cultural context
– U.S produced films and TV programs to a global market because they need the international market to be profiatble
– National cultural resources end up being interpreted and consumed in a local way and no longer belong to the culture where they originate
–Ideas and cultural products flow from the ‘periphery’ to the ‘center’ .