INTERNATIONAL BACHELOR COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA

Media TechnologyLela Mosemghvdlishvili

MP&I Lecture 6

Media Technology, lecture given by Lela Mosemghvdlishvili at the Erasmus University Rotterdam,

2013

Guest lecture "gendered technologies" by Lela Mosemghvdlishvili is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Previous Lecture

• Active audiences and 'active' content• Construction of Meaning

– agency of readers in sense making• Encoding/Decoding Model

– the importance of the social-cultural context

• Discourse and Discursive Resources• 3 modes of reading

readers or audience

Technology

media

industry

medial message or product

Simplified Model of Media and the Social World. Croteau, Hoynes & Milan, 2012.

Social WorldSocial World

today’s lecture

technological aspects of a medium How do technological characteristics of a medium influence

content and readers?development of medium theory

theories on the development and effects of technology

Critique of Technological DeterminismSocial Shaping of Technology Critical Theory of Technology

medium - its characteristics and critique

a medium

producer medium audiencemessage message

NOISE NOISE

simplified model derived from Shannon and Weaver, 1949

encodes/transmits/stores information

Media Technology, lecture given by Lela Mosemghvdlishvili at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, 2013

Printing (1450s) Media Technology, lecture given by Lela Mosemghvdlishvili at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, 2013

Man with a Movie Camera (1929) (by Dziga Vertov)

Development of Medium Theory

Walter Benjamin (1892 – 1940)

“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936)

Walter Benjamin

• associated with the Frankfurt School

• first systematic account of the mass cultural effects in 20th century

• he prefigures McLuhan’s “medium is a message”

• argues that particular medium has a specific grammar, which changes the way meaning is structured and transmitted/irrespective of artists’ intention

from artistic aura to mass mediated reality

Art as ritual (as part of mystic/religious experience)

Art as exhibition (artworks of worship became also objects of admiration

Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

He identifies 3 major (historical) stages

art as ritual

art as exhibition

art in the age of mechanical reproduction

in the age of mechanical reproduction

• decline of ´aura´ (uniqueness, symbolic value) • ability to circulate beyond physical home • reproducibility• optical unconscious (camera allows us to see for the first

time, what is not visible to necked eye)

• views on future– mass media as fundamental, revolutionary force– change in mode of artistic production (proliferation of

access) could lead to empowerment and emancipation of masses

Recap (Benjamin)

• Commentary on art, photography, early cinema• Fundamental change caused by technological

advancement (mechanical reproduction)• decline of aura, but raise of mediated reality • optimistic account of technology (for wider

population)• politics of art and mass media

What is the main difference between Benjamin’s view of mass media and Adorno’s criticism?

Marshal McLuhan(1911-1980)

• first Medium theorist

• comments on societal impacts of mass media (in particular TV)

• becomes a celebrity in 60ies

Annie Hall (1977) by Woody Allen  

Key concepts in McLuhan’s work

• media and mode of communication determine the nature of cultures/societies

• real impact of media technologies is not its content but their material presence, networks of production and consumption they create

• media is an extension of our sensory system (ear/mouth – radio; eye – photography)

• Acoustic or Preliterate cultures/societies human mouth and ear transmitters/receiversdirect (human) communication

• Literate cultures– phonetic writing as first medium because it translates oral

communication into written artefact– printing gives raise to first mass audience

• Visual cultures/societies – Ultimate Medium – Television– transforms mass audience into ‘electric communion’

modes of communication determine cultures

‘global village’ • electronic technology is directly linked to our sensory

system

• television brings (earlier fragmented senses back together, i.e. unites visual & acoustic)

• expansion of electronic media (TV) will lead to inclusion of all in ‘global village’

Criticism of McLuhan’s ideas? media determinism

from McLuhan's optimistic account of media

to Borstin’s pseudo-events and

Baudrillard’s hyperreality

Daniel Borstin: Pseudo-events emergence of ‘pseudo-events’• not spontaneous, but planned (press conference,

staged interview)

• produced, in order to be reported, or reproduced

• Its relations to reality is unclear (for example: human interest stories - evolve around stories, motivations and physiological contexts of the actors involved in a pseudo event; The actual substantive significance of the event is not

reported.• essentially tautological phenomenon

– staged spontaneity (news programs)

(Borstin, 1961)

How do pseudo-events influence media coverage of politics/ elections/conflicts/wars?

Gay Debord

(1967)• visual media produce vivid

(true-like) but essentially false images of life

• the Situationists (movement)

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007)

• influenced by Situationists and European Marxism

• early criticism (political economy and semiotics): symbolic value of commodity

• in 1980s moved to critique of mediation and mass communication

hyperreality• in technologically advanced postmodern

societies human consciousness is unable to distinguish between “reality” from a simulation of reality

• media shape/alter/produce and reproduce events & experiences

• hyperreality: reality without ‘real’• references without (real) referent

critique of Technological

Determinism

Social studies of Technology

critical theory of technology

Internet as a medium

Importance of Technology

structuring factor

enabling and limiting agency

Technological Determinism

• the common view on technology in politics, economics, popular discourse (partially in academia as well)

• roots of technological determinism– post-enlightenment understanding of science, as

being objective and value-free, based on rationality and discovered by experts

Two main assumptions in technological determinism

1. technology develops autonomously, according to its inner logic; its development path is linear and irreversible, from simple to complex configurations (technological innovations are not created but ‘discovered’ by experts)

2. society has to adapt to the ‘imperatives’ of technology (determination by base)

Positive and negative accounts on impact of technology on society

pessimist determinism

• technology fundamentally transforms our lives, rips it from its true essence

• human beings can no more relate to own social world in its true essence, - technology “reveals” the world to us

• solutions: retreat, negation

positivist determinism

•an uncritical embrasure of technocracy and unchallengeable belief in technical progress as an “exogenous force influencing society”

•technological progress will eliminate social problems/ inequalities/diseases etc.

Criticism of technological determinism

• positivist and pessimistic determination • depolitisation of technology• technology is not neutral and value-free• its production and usage takes place in the

social context• there is not only one but multiple ‘solutions’

possible• Where is Agency?

Empirical rejection of technological determinism

• Social Studies of technologies (UK, Netherlands, Europe)

• Main argument: – Development of technology is socially contingent

process; Relevant groups negotiate interpretative flexibility of technologies according to their values. Development of technology may lead to closure, when standard design emerges and/or is locked-in.

• classic example bicycle (Bijker, 1987)

Empirical rejection of technological determinism

Contribution from SST

• development of technology is socially contingent • `black-box' of technology has been opened • socio-economic patterns embedded in both the content

of technologies and the processes of innovation shape its development

• Critical question: – If development of technology is socially contingent, which

social groups and/or what forces drive this process? Where is agency of public/users in this process?

Critical Theory of Technology

the Critical Theory of Technology (Andrew Feenberg)

• It adds political and normative dimension to social shaping of technology

• Recognizes power as well as social contingency of technology

• Aims at Democratization of technology (its design, development and usage)

• technical code – “a technical code is a realization of an

interest or ideology in a technically coherent solution to a problem”; It is a criterion to select between alternative feasible technical designs (e.g. efficiency, safety, health, profit, etc.) (Feenberg, 2002).

example of creative appropriation (Feenberg)

• early 80es a Minitel telephone/computer was distributed to consumers for free; enabled them to view weather/railway information & news bulletins)

•however users hacked into the system (which allowed message posting) and started to use it for interpersonal, group communication

•creative appropriation of technology by users creates new uses of technology

“supermedium”?

internet as a medium

• platform and carrier of cross-media texts/content • a new medium in itself

– Hypertext – new genres? e.g. web (interactive) documentaries – software and open architecture

• as a structure enabling/constraining agency• a site of social struggle• future scenarios: two models of Internet/ community and

commercial model (Feenberg)

recent and forthcoming changes

Media in the pocket?

Augmented reality?

3D printing: creating objects

Social Consequences of New Media?

• change in perception of time/space

• hypertext undermines our ability to careful deliberation

• new media make us lose any sense of unmediated experience

• McThinking?• Generation Me?

• Wisdom or stupidity of crowds?

BIG data: surveillance and privacy

how does design of new media technologies limit/enable agency?

who ‘owns’/controls/regulates the global network?

P2P vs. client-server

Tug-of-War

• between technical capabilities of new media and social forces (economic, political, public interests)

• push and pull– commercial interests– user habits/interests– government regulations

Conclusion• Medium and its technological

characteristics effect the message• Development of medium theory and

critique of technology

• Development of technology is socially contingent

• Technology is not value free and neutral• It enables/limits agency

To prepare the lecture following sources were used:

Walter Benjamin (1935) “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

Taylor and Harris (2008): Critical Theories of Mass Media

Andrew Feenberg (2002) Transforming Technology: A critical theory revisited

Geert Lovink (2012) Networks Without Cause: A Critique of Social Media