cmst 9, 10 ,11 &12

Feminism:

• Feminism attempts to analyze the social position of women

• Feminism attempts to explain women’s apparent subordinate role in history 

• They offer the basis for reform and the advancement of women in all areas of society 

• Feminists believe that there is a fundamental power struggle between men and women

• Feminism is regularly classified in ‘waves’ – periods targeted at uplifting the status of women in society and giving them equal rights

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‘First wave’ feminism:

• The ‘first wave’ of feminism (roughly 1830–1930) 
• The focus was on gaining legal rights for women - property and divorce rights, and equality in voting rights

‘Second wave’ feminism:

• The ‘second wave’ (1960s and 1970s)
• The focus was on both public and private inequalities
• Issues of rape, reproductive rights, domestic violence and workplace safety were brought to the forefront 

‘Third wave’ feminism
:

• ‘Third-wave’ feminism (1990s)

• The ‘third wave’ in the last decade or so has been essentially a reflection on and reappraisal of what has been achieved


• The third wave mostly attempted to bring in groups that were up to that time left out of feminist aims 

• They identify the intersectionality of oppression

• The third wave also reclaimed terms used to subjugate women and use them for liberation

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Main elements of feminist thought:

• Sex, gender and ‘sexism’
• For most feminists, biological distinctions were of very minor significance. What was significant was gender
• Gender is a social construct; a cultural phenomenon that assigned different roles to women 
• It is a whole apparatus of imposed behavior patterns, expectations, thoughts, aspirations and even dreams
• Sexism is an ideology of oppression of one gender over another 
• It promotes the idea that ‘genderised’, socialised relations between men and women are natural and biological, and unable to be changed
• Public and private spheres
• If women were to be truly equal with men then there would need to be female emancipation within both the private sphere and the public sphere
• Perhaps there should be a ‘wage’ for the work done by women in the private sphere

Main elements of feminist thought 2:

• Patriarchy: This can be perceived as the chief reason of feminism
• Men and women have gender roles in society, but women have their role imposed on them by men
• This patriarchy (‘rule by men’) permeates all aspects of society, public and private, as well as language and intellectual discourse

Liberal feminism:

• Liberal feminism dominated the ‘first wave’ of feminism
• Liberal feminism focuses on the full extension of civil and legal rights to women by legislation
•  It demands a ‘level playing field’ secured by law
• This kind of feminism works within the structure of mainstream society to integrate women
• It does not directly challenge the system itself or the ideology behind women’s oppression

Radical feminism
:

• Radical feminism views patriarchy and sexism as the most elemental factor in women’s oppression in all societies

• It questions the very system and ideology behind women’s subjugation

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The Concept of Intersectionality in Feminist Theory:

• Intersectionality - Women’s lives are constructed by multiple, intersecting systems of oppression

• Oppression is not a singular process or a binary political relation

• Intersectionality originates in antiracist feminist critiques of the claim that women’s oppression could be captured through an analysis of gender alone

• Intersectionality is offered as a theoretical and political remedy to what is perhaps ‘the most pressing problem facing contemporary feminism – the long and painful legacy of its exclusions’

• Intersectionality theory has been celebrated as the ‘most important contribution that women’s studies has made so far’

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The Concept of Intersectionality in Feminist Theory 2:

• The influence of intersectionality has extended beyond the academy to international human rights discourses
• This concept is one of the greatest gifts of black women’s studies to social theory as a whole
• The metaphor of intersecting categories of discrimination was introduced and later elaborated by the Black feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
• Crenshaw was one of the founders of Critical Race Theory in the U.S. legal academy
• Yet intersectionality has a long history in Black feminism
• By the time that Crenshaw introduced the metaphor of intersectionality to critique dominant conceptions of discrimination in law and in social movements, the language of ‘intersections’ had already been circulating in contemporaneous antiracist feminist thought

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An Introduction to Classical Grounded Theory:

• When a researcher is starting out, they don't use any existing theories to help them; they get into the field and see what it is telling them; building a theory from the ground up 
• You need to have a set of propositions from the end of your research 
• What is grounded theory? Grounded theory is a general inductive research method for the systematic generation new theory from data acquired by a rigorous research method; looking at the interviews that you have done 
• Grounded theory can use either qualitative or quantitative data or a combination of these
• But it has mainly been used with qualitative data and known as a qualitative methodology; not entirely accurate to say grounded theory can only be used for qualitative
• Grounded theory was developed for the purpose to create a new theory rather than testing existing theory
• The method is termed ‘grounded’ because the theory is systematically obtained from a broad array of data through a rigorous process of constant comparison 
• At no time does researcher attempt to impose a theory from another study onto the data; all of us are subjective beings 

An Introduction to Classical Grounded Theory 2:

• Grounded theory is a method to develop theory from data

• Grounded theory is grounded in data which have been systematically obtained and analysed through “social” research; process is integrated, not linear

• The generation of a new theory using this method is an evolutionary process that occurs as the research is being conducted

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Why is Grounded Theory an important method?

• Because the GT method captures social process in social context, this research approach is most useful when the goal is a framework or theory that explains human behaviour in context; 

• most theories proposed are developed in the british context, we try to take theories that were developed in the UK for example, and use them in canadian context; but in grounded theory you are developing a theory ground up 

• Grounded Theory is known as an effective way of discovering the participants’ primary concern, the core category or core concern/problem; and how the participants handle their life circumstances; looking at how participants handle their circumstances, a way to develop a theory from people in your own context

• Grounded Theory provides tools to discover the participants’ core problem and to generate a theoretical conceptualization derived from living phenomena

• By developing theory, researchers seek to understand the problem situation as experienced by a group of participants and how they deal with this problem

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Why is Grounded Theory an important method 2 ?

• It is problem-focused because this approach involves investigating how people experiences and resolve their everyday problems

• It is important that the researcher understand, and ask questions about, what is happening; being open to the idea that there are multiple truths to be discovered, life is not objective to be found 

• In GT the researcher must continually ask, ‘What is going on?’ and, ‘What is the main problem of the participants and how are they trying to solve it?’

• Grounded Theory does not aim for ‘truth’ but to conceptualize what is going on by using empirical data

• Thus the researcher must be immersed in the data in order to understand the events described and proceed from data collection to analysis, and on to organizing concepts and relationships into a theory; statement that is true when doing content analysis, allows you to begin to make links that can be seen in the data 

• The theory gathered by this approach can be clarified and refined by asking questions which can provide more in-depth knowledge about categories; these questions should be in depth and contain detailed data 

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How does grounded theory approach work?

• Traditional research process follows chronological stages but in grounded theory study, data collection, coding and analysis is occurring at the same time; interpreting what participants are saying, and then coming up with statements that could potentially be true 

• The process is not impeded by the development of research problems, theoretical understanding, or literature review

• The researcher is granted the freedom to enter the field and discover the main concern of participants and to identify participant approaches to resolving the problems experienced; take your communities seriously, and honours their experience

• Through analysis, data—mainly in the form of transcripts, field-note observations, written data or literature—are sorted into conceptual codes

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• During a process of comparison, these individual codes are compared, and arranged to form meaningful categories

• Through a process of abstraction, these categories build, and are refined until they are able to lead the researcher toward the development of substantive theory or conceptual hypotheses

• Throughout the analysis process, memos are written to capture emerging ideas about concepts and their relationships

• This process of collecting data to develop the hypotheses and further identify properties and relationships among concepts is called theoretical sampling 

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When is Grounded Theory an appropriate approach?

• This research approach is most useful when the goal is a framework or theory that explains human behaviour in context; presenting explanations that describe behaviour

• GT provides tools to discover the participants’ core problem and to generate a theoretical conceptualization derived from living phenomena

• By developing theory, researchers seek to understand the problem situation as experienced by a group of participants and how they deal with this problem

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The Frankfurt school:

• The Institute for Social Research, an academic institution of the University of Frankfurt in Germany opened in 1924 and commonly referred to as the Frankfurt School

• Theorists - Max Horkheimer, T.W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Lowenthal, and Erich Fromm; They were known for developing critical theory

• The Frankfurt School comprised scholars/political dissidents disgruntled with the existing socio-economic systems e.g. capitalism, fascism of the 1930s

• Context: The rise of Nazi occupation in Germany and fascism in Italy demonstrated the power of mass propaganda 

• Context: The ability of music and other popular forms to ideologically control its audiences

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The Frankfurt school 2:

• In the introduction to The Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer assert that: 

• [t]here is no longer any available form of linguistic expression which has not tended toward accommodation to dominant currents of thought’ (1979: xii) and argue later, in their chapter on ‘the culture industry’ that ‘[f]ilms, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part’ (1979: 120).

• They produced some of the first accounts within critical social theory of the importance of mass culture and communication in social reproduction and domination

• As victims of fascism, the Frankfurt school experienced first hand the ways that the Nazis used the instruments of mass culture to produce submission to fascist culture and society

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• Moving from Nazi Germany to the United States (exile), theorists experienced at first hand the rise of a media culture

• Adorno and Horkheimer’s move to Los Angeles in the 1940s to escape Nazi occupation influenced their theorization

• Hollywood and the star industry was regarded as constituting audiences as dupes

• In the United States, the members of the Frankfurt school came to believe that American media culture was also highly ideological and worked to promote the interests of U.S. capitalism

• Adorno and Horkheimer argue that the industry created ‘dupes’ of the masses – that they would mindlessly consume the latest version of the same thing without question

• They write: ‘No independent thinking must be expected from the audience: the product prescribes every reaction…. ’ (1979: 137)

• Even when aware of being manipulated, consumers will take pleasure and buy the products of the culture industry without question

• They argued that the culture industries in US were controlled by giant corporations

• They were organized according to the strictures of mass production, churning out products that generated a highly commercial system of culture, which in turn sold the values, life-styles, and institutions of capitalism

• The Frankfurt school theorised about 'the end of the individual’

• Giant organizations and institutions overpowered individuals

• Two of its key theorists Max Horkheimer and T.W. Adorno developed an account of the “culture industry”  

• The culture industry thesis described both the production of massified cultural products and homogenized subjectivities

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• Mass culture for the Frankfurt School produced desires, dreams, hopes, fears, and longings, as well as unending desire for consumer products

• The culture industry produced cultural consumers who would consume its products and conform to the dictates and the behaviors of the existing society

• This situation was most marked in the United States that had little state support of film or television industries

• The Frankfurt combined a critique of political economy of the media, analysis of texts, and audience reception studies of the scial and ideological effects of mass culture and communications

• The culture industries had the specific function of providing ideological legitimation of the existing capitalist societies and of integrating individuals into the framework of its social formation

• The critical theorists investigated the cultural industries in a political context

• They thought of them as a form of the integration of the working class into capitalist societies

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Contributions of the Frankfurt school:

• Frankfurt School critical theory provides the Big Picture

• They analyzed the relationship between the economy, state, society, and everyday life

• The critical theory approach strongly influenced critical approaches to mass communication and television within academia 

• They influenced the views of the media of the New Left and others in the aftermath of the 1960s

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Some shortcomings:

• Media culture was never as massified and homogeneous as in the Frankfurt school model

• This work exemplifies the notion of the media as a powerful agent of control and the audience as a passive receiver

• Critics: Adorno and Horkheimer’s theorisations were later challenged by scholars such as John Fiske 

• Fiske’s argument - individuals give mass-cultural art forms personal meaning, and in so doing actively engage with them

• Critics: Lawrence Grossberg: 

• As scholars, need to be careful to resist simplifying the notion of audience and instead appreciate the differences that exist in different sub-groups and demographics

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The glasgow media group:

• The Glasgow Media Group was established in 1974 at the Glasgow University

• Early work was mainly on television news journalism in the United Kingdom

• It focused on issues relating to the economy and industrial relations; main work was looking at news journalism in the UK; looked how it represented media relations

• As the work developed new topics were explored…

• War and peace media coverage, Representations of AIDS, child sexual abuse, the “mad cow disease,” mental health, breast cancer, The reporting of disasters in Africa

• Much of the work of the group has been embedded in academic and political controversy

• Contrary to the claims, conventions and culture of television journalism, the news is not a neutral product

• Television news is a cultural artifact; it is a sequence of socially manufactured messages; news was ways of representing the public 

• These messages carried many of the culturally dominant assumptions of our society

• From the selection of stories to presentation of bulletins news was considered a highly mediated product

• Television news was in the 1970s a relatively young activity in Britain; Television had become a major source of information to the population 

• The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Independent Television News (ITN with mandates to be impartial) were responsible for all television news at that time; dominant station

• Before any research took place, there were critics of television news from the right and left of the political spectrum

• News was described as biased against business and biased against the trade unions by various interest groups

• Initial research by the group examined how news bulletins were organized and constructed in general

• They wanted to see what it meant in practice to treat a controversial matter in a way that claimed to be impartial

• They chose the area of industrial relations in Britain

• The news organizations were not happy to be the object of research scrutiny and were defensive

• The main research method was that of content analysis; This was the first time in Britain that an academic analysis of television news over an extended period, some 5 months, had taken place; This was carried out through continuous video recording of all news bulletins, not just a sample; content analysis on how trade union workers were being represented, and capital were represented

• It meant that they were able to say a great deal, with much evidential detail, about what constituted news

• They used both quantitative and qualitative methods; The results of the initial study were reported in two volumes, Bad News (GUMG, 1976) and More Bad News (GUMG, 1980)

• Many times, people told the researchers that it had been a revelation and they would never think of television news in the same way again

• The media considered the Glasgow Group analysis to be an attack on their professional integrity; if you don't have a strong counter argument 

• A BBC producer noted: “The allegations made by the Glasgow group and others were permeating deeply into the consciousness of the general public, even down to influencing the way some of the BBC’s own news trainees based their appreciation of its news coverage” (Really Bad News, 1982, p. 68)

• The Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG) has made a sustained contribution to our understanding of media culture and especially to notions of objectivity and impartiality

• Despite criticisms, the Glasgow Media Group provided a ‘holistic’ study of producers, texts and audiences

• The group’s findings have formed the basis of television programmes and have been cited in the House of Commons by sympathetic Members of Parliament

• The GUMG has also seized the attention of broadcasters in a way that is very unusual for media academics, who operate in a very different world to that of media professionals; the research made the people outside the media group to also push back and reflect on the news being shared 

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The Toronto School of Communication Theory
:

• The Toronto School of Communication Theory also known as The Toronto School /Medium Theory; Active =1930s -1970s

• Communications school at UofT is still in existence, but the theorizing and contributions were made around this time frame

• The theory is connected to professors at the University of Toronto 

• Founded = Harold Adams Innis and Herbert Marshall McLuhan

• Harold Adams Innis = November 5, 1894 – November 9, 1952, political economist, Professor at the University of Toronto. ; they were not communications professors to begin with 

• Innis’ work ended up impacting one of his students, Herbert Marshall McLuhan

• Herbert Marshall McLuhan = July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980, Professor of English at the University of Toronto

• McLuhan’s most contentious ideas was on hot and cool media

• Hot media =  rich sensory information e.g., movies; able to engage in the media, it is heard, sung etc.

• Cool media = less sensory information and requires a lot active  from in terms; of participation from audiences e.g., speech, telephone; takes a lot for the audience to participate, invitation is useful during this space and time  

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The Toronto School of Communication Theory 2
:

• McLuhan’s medium theory states that any advanced modern society is shaped by the various media technologies that are available to it; can be true today if we look at how technology can be used 
• What matters, is not the content of these media technologies but the technologies themselves; technological determinists, not the only ones to theorize what had been happening 
• The “Toronto School” insists that the technologies of the media of communication are far more influential than their content
• Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan are not alone in making this claim and not the earliest; other scholars were already thinking along the same lines 
• The messages contained in any medium are inseparable from the medium’s human consequences, and it is these consequences that matter most; choosing to put something on twitter or linked in, rather than posting something in the student union 
• ‘The medium is the message’ because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action
• We can best understand McLuhan’s medium theory by examining how it compares the properties of different media; the content is important, but the choice of medium has far reaching implications towards how the audience will be accepting it 

Example:

• Imagine an event like the one that occurred on September 11th 2001:

• Two planes crash into the twin towers of the World Trade Center

• How did the vast majority of the world’s population experience this event? They watched the shocking images on television 

• What if an event similar to 9/11 had occurred in 1801 rather than 2001? The event would have still been shocking to hear about, but ‘hear about it’ – through word-of-mouth or, reading about it in a newspaper – In 1801 television and other electrical media did not exist 

• The medium is the message here in the sense that the medium through which a message is sent to its receiver dictates the power of that message

• Medium theory is inseparable from the processes of modernity undergone by advanced industrial societies

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The Toronto School of Communication Theory 3
:

• McLuhan refers to three eras of media history within the wider context of modernity

• McLuhan was showing how the medium impacts the ways we communicate with one another and the implications of that

• Tribal Age (Pre-literate, no written language, oral communication) – Before 1500; medium of communication was largely oral, implications of it being only oral 

• Detribalization Age (Mechanization, the print age - invention of the printing press) –1500 to 1900; the printing press was the medium of communication, what changes happens to the reception of the media 

• Electronic Age (Television, creating what McLuhan called the ‘global village’) – After 1900; television, radio, before television became what it is today

• Digital Age – not really part of McLuhan’s work (interactive, social media)

• Communicating via a medium or technology is different from face-to-face communication

• With communication via tech, one needs to have the technology

• People tend not to have inhibitions behind computer screens – affects what people say

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Key Ideas:

• Media are more than channels of communication. Media are part of the message

• Some media will encourage interaction with other people…some media will discourage it

• The medium is the message – the choice of media will impact the way the message is received. The choice of media communicates how you feel about a message

• Media are different; Which senses does the medium engage? How does that impact the message?

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