Showing papers in "Critical Studies in Media Communication in 1988"
TL;DR: The authors considers women who write fiction based in the Star Trek universe and considers the issue of literary property in light of the moral economy of the fan community that shapes the range of permissible retellings of the program materials.
Abstract: This essay rejects media‐fostered stereotypes of Star Trek fans as cultural dupes, social misfits, or mindless consumers, perceiving them, in Michel de Certeau's term, as “poachers” of textual meanings who appropriate popular texts and reread them in a fashion that serves different interests. Specifically, the essay considers women who write fiction based in the Star Trek universe. First, it outlines how these fans force the primary text to accommodate alternate interests. Second, it considers the issue of literary property in light of the moral economy of the fan community that shapes the range of permissible retellings of the program materials.
209 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a participant observation study takes a critical look at the idea of "news routines" and finds that news routines, like the need to show balance or to report events instead of long-term trends, make it difficult to say anything deeply critical of the status quo.
Abstract: This participant observation study takes a critical look at the idea of “news routines.” By looking at a politically oppositional news room, it is possible to sort through the elements of production to discover just which ones make this radio station's news “oppositional.” Some scholars say that news routines, like the need to show balance or to report events instead of long‐term trends, make it difficult to say anything deeply critical of the status quo. This news room, a “deviant case,” uses the same routines as “mainstream” reporters, but the resulting news is politically very different. What makes the difference are the station's organizational factors, the relation of the station to its audience, the social and political positions of those in control of the station, and the reporters’ social positions and political world views.
132 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that when submitting insulting advertisements and clippings from various mass media for republication in Ms. magazine, readers are engaging in oppositional decoding, resisting the preferred readings, to use Stuart Hall's term.
Abstract: This essay, based on a reading of 10 years of the “No Comment” feature of Ms. magazine, argues that when submitting insulting advertisements and clippings from various mass media for republication in Ms. , readers are engaging in oppositional decoding. That is, the readers are resisting the “preferred readings,” to use Stuart Hall's term. The essay speculates why such oppositional decoding is a satisfying group process for the Ms. readership; it also notes that the fact that a particular interpretive community might decode oppositionally presents another challenge to conventional linear models of communication.
59 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined differences in viewers' retellings of an episode of Dallas and found correlations between ethnicity and choice of narrative form, which reflected viewers' perceptions of the program and their own worlds.
Abstract: Within the broader study of how viewers from different cultures interpret American television texts, this article examines differences in viewers’ retellings of an episode of Dallas. In settings designed to simulate normal viewing circumstances, small homogeneous groups from five distinct cultural backgrounds watched an episode and then were asked how they would retell the story to someone who had not seen the show. The coding of the group retellings reveals correlations between ethnicity and choice of narrative form—classified as “linear,” “segmented,” or “thematic"—which, in turn, reflect viewers’ perceptions of the program and their own worlds.
53 citations
TL;DR: This paper pointed out that technology is based on the dominant masculine value system of Western culture, that women have been active creators and innovators throughout history, that technology has a profound impact on women's labor, and that women are instrumental in the construction of public and private spheres.
Abstract: Critical discussions of technology have looked at technology and the exercise of power but have failed to look at the power relations of gender. A focus on technology as gendered illuminates technology as a site where social practices are embedded and express and extend the construction of two asymmetrical genders. Feminists point out that technology is based on the dominant masculine value system of Western culture, that women have been active creators and innovators throughout history, that technology has a profound impact on women's labor, and that technology is instrumental in the construction of public and private spheres.
51 citations
TL;DR: In country music work songs, concrete images of blood, sweat, and tears are treated as the only legitimate evidence of a worker's rightful place within the symbolic community as mentioned in this paper, however, in a way that invites self-identification with hegemonic forms.
Abstract: This essay suggests a complex dialectical relationship among (1) the meanings that acculturation encourages workers to attribute to their everyday experiences, (2) the meanings enacted in country music work songs, and (3) the support of hierarchical social and organizational power relationships in workers’ identities. In country work songs, concrete images of blood, sweat, and tears are treated as the only legitimate evidence of a worker's rightful place within the symbolic community. In this music, a “working‐class” identity based on manual labor is celebrated. It is celebrated, however, in a way that invites self‐identification with hegemonic forms.
48 citations
TL;DR: The emergence of a cultural studies perspective provides opportunities for a critique of the prevailing practice and offers a comprehensive, contextualized approach to the study of societies as mentioned in this paper, which is a problematic that is largely defined by the economic and political interests of the United States government.
Abstract: Comparative and international communication research in the United States reflects an institutional proximity to communication and media theory and research and acts upon a problematic that is largely defined by the economic and political interests of the United States government. Such an ideological position dominates the development of the field and defines its theoretical and methodological parameters. The emergence of a cultural studies perspective provides opportunities for a critique of the prevailing practice and offers a comprehensive, contextualized approach to the study of societies.
44 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the diffuse and varied theories of ideology as presented in Marxist-based critical studies and focuses on how these theories take up a strategic function within the general project of Marxist theory.
Abstract: This essay examines the diffuse and varied theories of ideology as presented in Marxist‐based critical studies and focuses on how these theories take up a strategic function within the general project of Marxist theory. The inadequacies of this discourse of “ideological” analysis are examined by way of the work of Michel Foucault. On the basis of this analysis, a new direction for critical studies of the media is proposed, a move away from the uses of the theory of ideology toward the concept of power/knowledge.
43 citations
TL;DR: The authors used Gramsci's theory of politics to examine how TV Globo has become the key mediator between the Brazilian "ruling bloc" and the dominated classes in the construction and maintenance of hegemony.
Abstract: This essay uses Gramsci's theory of politics to examine how TV Globo has become the key mediator between the Brazilian “ruling bloc” and the dominated classes in the construction and maintenance of hegemony. Brazil's broadcasting situation reveals a formidable presence of the state in granting licenses for station operation and regulation. The state is also one of the main advertisers as well as owner and operator of the physical infrastructure for communication. Despite that, the country lives under a virtual monopoly of TV Globo, the fourth largest network in the world and part of a huge privately owned conglomerate. The Globo media group is a powerful actor in the political process, and over the years it has manipulated its television newscasts by distorting, suppressing, and promoting information according to its own interests and those of the class fraction it represents.
38 citations
TL;DR: The recent controversy over "scientific creationism" represents an intriguing case study of the interpenetration of the paradigm discourses of science, religion, politics, and law and public motive structures as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The recent controversy over “scientific creationism” represents an intriguing case study of the interpenetration of the paradigm discourses of science, religion, politics, and law and public motive structures. Despite nearly unanimous judicical rejection, creationist claims for “balanced treatment” with evolution in the public schools have received an inexplicably favorable public response. Our analysis of journalistic accounts of a pivotal trial in the creationism controversy suggests that the journalistic commitment to objectivity produced a journalistic leveling which rhetorically transformed competing discourses into equivalent ones. We argue that the elite discourse of science found resonance in the elite discourse of law, while the populist discursive commitments of journalism indirectly legitimated the populist discourse of creationism.
36 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the work of several scholars from different traditions to show that many schools of thought have suggested that formal linkage creates rhetorical effect: some structuralists, Marxists, recent media theorists, and even Altheide and Snow.
Abstract: In this essay, I develop the argument that texts may be especially rhetorically effective when the content, the medium used to convey the content, and real life experiences that make the content relevant are formally or structurally similar. I examine the work of several scholars from different traditions to show that many schools of thought have suggested that formal linkage creates rhetorical effect: some structuralists, Marxists, recent media theorists, and the work of Altheide and Snow. Burke's theory of form is offered as a useful way to explain the effect of formal links. The ways that formal linkages and the symbolic dynamics of content, medium, and experience might be discovered are illustrated in an analysis of conventional, heterosexual, male‐dominant pornography as viewed on home videocassette recorders. Finally, I consider the implications of discovering such formal links and outline research strategies needed to develop this argument further.
TL;DR: The authors argue that much of the reason a series like Hill Street Street Blues can appear more "real" is because much of its verisimilitude arises paradigmatically, and that viewers, involved in the work of text construction, may engage Hill Street Blues' encoding not so much as verite but as something that most of the rest of televi...
Abstract: “Realism” as a notion applied to visual media comes to television studies encrusted with ideas from centuries of debate. This essay suggests that “verisimilitude” is a more fruitful term not only because it is less value laden but because, by definition (“real‐seeming”), it implies the notion of “work.” Television verisimilitude, like all forms of television representation, is a product of engagement between program and viewer in the process of text construction. Television offers varying degrees of verisimilitude, from the preferred naturalized codes that parallel television ‘s achieved ontology of “liveness” to the self‐reflexive nature of verite. I argue that much of the reason a series like Hill Street Blues, whose verisimilitude is so obviously constructed, can appear more “real” is because much of its verisimilitude arises paradigmatically. Viewers, involved in the work of text construction, may engage Hill Street Blues' encoding not so much as verite but as something that most of the rest of televi...
TL;DR: A rich body of scholarship has begun to answer important questions about history and cultural theory, but it has also pointed the way toward even more complex and intriguing work yet to be done as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In recent years, challenges from inside as well as outside the discipline have encouraged historians to investigate mass communication processes and texts as primary evidence about the past. Historically grounded inquiries into mass communication have focused on three related areas of analysis: apparatus centered criticism, social history, and textual interpretation. This rich body of scholarship has begun to answer important questions about history and cultural theory, but it has also pointed the way toward even more complex and intriguing work yet to be done.
TL;DR: In this article, the results of a complete empirical phenomenological analysis of Goffman's report on data are presented, and the results are compared to the contemporary theory and methodology of semiotic phenomenology.
Abstract: Phenomenology is a human science theory and methodology whose history runs from Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz to Maurice Merleau‐Ponty and his student, Michel Foucault. One applied form of this qualitative research tradition in the United States is the ethnomethodology of Erving Goffman. While many of his research practices are “phenomenological,” they are decidedly a‐theoretical, especially by comparison to the contemporary theory and methodology of semiotic phenomenology. Goffman's research on the experience of radio frames is critiqued by providing the results of a complete empirical phenomenological analysis of Goffman's report on data.