Media & Society exam #2

representation

the use of language and images to create meaning

polysemy

things can have multiple meanings

participatory culture

A media environment where audiences actively create, share, and engage with content, rather than just consuming it

Synchronization

-How media and technology organize and control people's time and rhythms

-Different people are going to experience this differently

Ideology

A system of beliefs, values, and assumptions that shapes how we understand the world

Representation/re-presentation

take an original, mediate it, and play it back

Instafame

a variety of microcelebrity as it exists on a particular platform

Semiotics

the study of signs and symbols and their use of interpretation

Interpellation

the way in which ideas get into our heads and have an effect on our lives, so much so that cultural ideas have such a hold on us that we believe they are our own

Hegemony

dominance of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who shape the culture of the society

Denotative meaning

the literal, surface meaning of a sign (dictionary meaning)

Connotative meaning

the cultural or emotional associations of a sign

Articulation

to account for the relationship between media and thier social context

Symbolic Interactionism

a theory that meaning is created through everyday social interactions and interpretation of symbols

Frontstage

public self that we present to others

Backstage

Private self behind the scenes

Incorporation/recuperation

the process by which mainstream cultures absorbs and neutralizes subversive ideas

consent

the process by which people accept dominant ideas as natural

Oppositional decoding

When audiences reject or challenge the dominant meanings of a media text

Three facets of ideology (Althusser)

1. Lived experience = ideology feels real and natural

2. Material practices = ideology exists in institutions (schools, media, religion, gov)

3. Interpellation = ideology constructs individuals as subjects

what myth "does" for Barthes

-Naturalizes ideology (makes cultural ideas seem universal)

-Depoliticizes meaning (hides power relations)

-Turns history into common sense

how hegemony works on various levels

-Cultural: media narratives, entertainment

-Institutional: education, politics, laws

-Everyday life: habits, language, norms

Roland Barthes

-Developed concept of myth: naturalizes society

-Expanded semiotics into cultural analysis

Antonio Gramsci

-Developed theory of hegemony

-Power works through consent, not just force

-Dominant groups maintain control by shaping culture

Stuart Hall

-Developed encoding/decoding model

-Believed that media plays a central role in spreading the dominant ideas

Charles Sanders Peirce:

Believed that meaning depends on relationship between sign and object

Ferdinand de Saussure:

-Language and media are systems of signs

-Meaning is arbitrary

Sarah Sharma:

-Synchronization

-Time is politically unequal (some control it, others adapt to it)

-Considers the implications of existing in a sphere where your time is of less value than others

Louis Althusser

-ideologies are: mostly unconscious, material as well as ideas, "common sense"

-He says, "A system of representation through which humans live imagines relations to the real conditions of existence."

-Ideology as a lived experience (it feels natural)

Hypodermic needle theory

the claim that media can inject information into the main stream

Mediazation

long term social changes corresponding to alterations in the media landscape