Lecture 5: Media and communication

• Communication


  Our first need is to communicate; we are the product of communication
• Communication systems


  The ways we communicate can determine the content of communication
• Our communication is capitalist. That means our communication is shaped by economic markets. These markets fail.
• As a result, we are largely created and controlled by large corporations. We are mindless, unthinking, automated consumers.
• Communication


  Is how we come to be as social beings
• Ways we communicate


  • Signs (semiotics)
  • Culture
• Culture


  • The product of communication
  • The content of communication
• WE are the product of communication
• Discourse


  A group of ideas and understandings about a topic that is communicated through language. It is composed of signs (Sign= signifier+signified) and are complex signs themselves.
• Meme


  An entire discourse or part of one – a word, phrase, or idea that seems to self-replicate through society
• Memes


  • "Brangelina"
  • "Hipster"
  • "Retail Therapy"
  • "Is there an app for that"
  • "Fake news"
• Subjectivity


  • A blank human space that is populated by discourses and/or memes
  • It seems to be an entity of its own
  • But really it is controlled my memes and discourses
  • You are a subjectivity
  • You are a "machine for memes" – a blank space whose purpose is to propagate memes and discourses (Richard Dawkins, 1976)
  • It is the memes and discourses that are actually in control
  • People usually mistake their subjectivity with their "self"
• Canadiana


  • Tim Horton's ad: (proud fathers)
• Communication Systems


  • The social and technical systems through which we communicate and organize our communication
  • These shape communication
  • Therefore they shape our subjectivities
• Encoding / Decoding Model

  Positions of decoding: Dominant/hegemonic, Negotiated, Oppositional
• Our Communication System is capitalist
• Cultural industries


  Institutions in our society which employ the characteristic modes of production and organization of industrial corporations to produce and disseminate symbols in the form of cultural goods and services … as commodities.
• In capitalist societies, culture is largely produced in "cultural industries"
• Cultural and Media Industries account for 7% total global GDP
• Cultural and Media Industries are the largest export product of USA
• Trade in cultural goods has doubled over the last ten years
• Cultural and Media Industries are increasing 10% per year
• The "New Economy" is a "creative economy" in which all products are to a certain extent cultural (Product packaging, Advertising, Lifestyle marketing, code, design, financial service)
• Why is the economy cultural?

  • 1950s crisis of overproduction
  • Digital technology
  • Extension of intellectual property law
  • But really, it was always cultural – because humans are cultural creatures ('subjectivities', not 'selves')
• Liberal (neoclassical) economics


  • The standard way of analyzing all industries – including cultural and media
  • An extension of the ideology of liberalism
  • Free market distribution of all goods will ensure the most efficient use of resources and highest output
  • The most efficient producers with the highest quality products will be successful and the inferior will fail in any given market
• Markets only work properly under certain conditions: Perfect competition, Perfect information, Decreasing Marginal Returns (No economies of scale – this means bigger cannot be better), Consumer sovereignty
• ALL of these conditions are violated in the case of cultural goods. Markets ALWAYS fail when the product has cultural content
• Imperfect Competition

  • Movie Industry: Five Majors usually control the majority of the market (Paramount, MGM, Fox, Warner Bros., RKO)
  • Music industry: The "Big Four" record companies account for ever 80% of US sales – Warner (15%), Sony BMG (26%), Universal (31%), EMI (10%)
• Imperfect Information


  • Products such as music, TV shows, or film are heterogeneous
  • Consumers therefore cannot know that the music they are buying is the "best" unless they have heard all music, film etc. in the world
  • 27000-35000 "CDs" (about 300,000 songs) released each year in US
  • 450 movies per year (US); 2500 (World)
• Result of imperfect information

  • "Gatekeepers" – record companies, radio programmers, movie theatres, movie critics etc.
  • It costs a lot of money (or sex, or drugs) to even get a gatekeeper's attention.
• Increasing Marginal Returns (economies of scale)


  • Fixed costs greatly exceed variable costs
  • Cost of producing a CD master is anywhere from $20,000 – 1,000,000
  • Cost to produce a "blockbuster" – style film $65 million – 200 million
  • Advertising Hollywood film up to $100 mill
  • Video for Michael Jackson "Scream" $7 mill, Mariah Carey "Heartbreaker" $2.5mill.
• Result of increasing returns to scale

  • Incentive is for companies to produce very few products and sell them to everybody
  • Products without such advertising/production budgets get buried. Go largely unnoticed by public
  • Advertising does not necessarily add value, but blocks other products from the market
  • Leads to imperfect competition
• No Consumer Sovereignty


  • Consumer tastes may be shaped by advertising
  • Consumer tastes are shaped by the tastes of other consumers
  • And this can be manipulated by marketers
  • Harvard study of music taste formation
• Implication: Human identities, ideas, values, and tastes are formed through communication. Media and cultural markets shape that communication. These markets do not work "perfectly"
• Result of Market Failure: Very small percentage of cultural products come to consumer's attention. Those which do, have usually been hand-picked by gatekeepers who are largely influenced by those with money and power. Frustrating and unfair business for cultural producers. Unfair to consumers (somebody is deciding for you)
• Result of market failure: Global media conglomerates
• The Culture Industry


  • Cultural industries do not just produce cultural products, they produce culture
  • And only the one type of culture that privileges the privileged: capitalist consumer culture
  • Instrumental rationality (work efficiently to achieve ends) vs Value rationality where decisions are based on what is "right"
  • Commodity fetishism (consumer goods give "supernatural powers) increased work
• Culture Industry Creates


  • Standardization – a standard format applies to all products
  • Pseudo-individualization – we a trained to react emotionally to the standard form but minor, cosmetic changes to each product make us believe that we are expressing our individual taste and desire
  • Distraction - from real world inequalities and injustices
  • Cooption - Cultural resistance has disappeared – even 'radical' is just a clothing style.
• $7 billion Amount spent in US each year on cosmetics
• 2,500,000 Number of lives in poorest nations that could be saved each year by spending $7 billion on primary health care