TOPIC OF THE BLOG:-

This blog is part of an assignment for the Paper 205 Cultural Studies- Sem - 3, 2024.

Exploring the Relationship between Media and Culture: A Cultural Studies Perspective

TABLE OF CONTENTS:-

❍ Personal information

❍ Assignment Details

❍ Abstract

❍ Keywords

❍ Introduction

❍Media manipulative power in Herman’s and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent

❍ Media and the Construction of “Techno-Culture” in Kellner’s Media Culture

❍ Cyberculture: A New Paradigm Shift

❍ Conclusion

❍ Work Cited

PERSONAL INFORMATION:-

Name: - Priyanshiba Kanaksinh Gohil

Batch No: M.A. Sem 3 (2023-2025)

Enrollment Number: - 5108230018

E-mail Address: - priyabagohil7126@gmail.com

Roll Number: - 21

Assignment Details:-

Topic:- Exploring the Relationship between Media and Culture: A Cultural Studies Perspective

Subject Code & Paper:- 205 Cultural Studies

Submitted to:- Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar

Date of Submission:- 20th November, 2024

About Assignment:- In this Assignment, I am going to Explore the Relationship between Media and Culture: A Cultural Studies Perspective.

Abstract:

In this assignment, I'm trying to explore the multiple layers that intervene in the relationship between media and culture. it argues that media products and messages have always been constructed to either serve the dominant elite’s ideology, gain public consent, or consolidate racial and gender stereotypes. Media forms, types, and genres are cultural filters or ideological paradigms targeting the audiences’ Hedonist propensity for visual pleasure. In his book Media Culture, Douglas Kellner (1995) highlights the sinuous relationship between media and culture by stating that media culture has emerged whereby sounds and spectacles help produce the fabric of everyday life and help shape political views and social behavior. When we look at media from a cultural studies perspective, we become conscious of its sweeping impact on people’s political views and identity. Noam Chomsky (1988) argues that media “manufactures consent”, therefore confirming the manipulative facet of media culture through his five filters: ownership, advertising, media elite, flak and common enemy. With the increasing normalization of digital technology, “techno culture” has taken on a more incisive turn by driving people to keep swinging between online and offline cultures. Through virtual and immersive actions, new cultural forms have been invented, namely e-society, cyber communities and cultural identities. Hence, by adopting a cultural studies perspective, to provide a theoretical framework for media culture by exploring the concepts of “techno-culture”, Chomsky’s and Herman’s five filters, and cyberculture.

Keywords

Techno-Culture, media Five Filters, Media Culture, Cultural Identities.

Introduction

The relationship between media and culture has always been discussed, analysed, researched and debated in the academic arena. Media has never been viewed as a self-contained or discrete apparatus that operates outside its multimodal context. Informed critics and scholars have conscientiously endeavoured to examine the social and cultural artefacts that underpin media outlets and discourses which shape human thoughts, behaviours and cultural identities. Media studies theorists have gone far beyond the limited and atavistic approach which positions media outlets within the parochial scope of providing information, knowledge and entertainment. Such a superficial attitude would certainly fail to decipher the hidden messages that cut deep into media texts and are mostly nurtured by power relations. Media messages/texts are not “raw”, “innocent”, or “objective”. They reflect ideologies, stereotypes, worldviews, biased attitudes, political agendas, and editorial lines of media makers and politicians, that is, people who own the means of production.

In this vein, Michel Foucault’s power knowledge theory adequately fits into the dialogical relationship between media and culture. His insightful comments on the exercise of power through cultural constructs and social institutions have enormously benefitted the field of media studies and provided the lens from which to discern discursive practices that permeate media texts.

Foucault (1978) has rightly pointed out that..

“Power is something exercised, put into action, in relationships”. Indeed, media outlets and platforms are stages or arenas where power is smoothly infiltrated and exercised by people who control the media. In the same line, Foucault argues that “Power relations are multiple, local, and diffused through social relations”

In this sense, media is reflexive of social relations that are animated and sustained by power relations. In theory, the ideal paradigm of media is to echo the voice of the masses, to promote cultural, racial and ethnic diversity, and to decry social hierarchies, racial prejudices and stereotypes. Conversely, the media apparatus has been systematically manipulated by the elite to diffuse power and “to control the thoughts and actions of others”, which makes it appear as “a barrier to the kind of egalitarian social relations that are seen as a requisite for learning, knowledge sharing and innovation” (Heizmann & Olsson, 2015, p. 757).

It is, then, a self-evident truth that media is profoundly entangled in the dissemination of power relations that are constituents of human societies. It would be a sheer hallucination to dissociate media from its social, cultural and political determinants. Media is not only a technological system or network that attests to human ingenuity in crafting a kind of simulacrum of reality to appeal to people’s instinctual seduction to visual pleasure. Simply put, media is a culture, a way of life, a normative practice, and a carrier of meanings, messages, discourses and tropes. Media is a shaping force that seeps into people’s minds and psyche, reflecting, therefore, the people/society we are. In this context, we totally agree with Douglas Kellner (1995) when he pertinently confirms that media produces “the fabric of everyday life”, which eloquently describes the sweeping and shaping power of media. In their turn, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (1988) highlight the manipulative power of media culture in what they label “Manufacturing Consent” through media propagandistic structures and agendas that serve the interests of people in power, as it will be illustrated later.

Media manipulative power in Herman’s and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent

The manipulative power of media in contemporary society is undeniable and pervasive. Through critical analysis of media texts, researchers can identify discursive messages constructed by media makers who typically align with elite power structures and agendas. Media outlets function as propagandistic machines, disseminating the ideologies of the powerful while encouraging masses to internalize these cultural narratives in their daily lives. The intensity of media control shapes people's thoughts, behaviors, and values through compelling messages that create what Michel Foucault terms "docile bodies" - entities that are "manipulated, shaped, trained, which obeys, responds, becomes skilful and increases its forces".

The evolution of media culture has led to unprecedented media dependency, with individuals increasingly relying on media to fulfill various social, cultural, and psychological needs. Uses and Gratification Theory research demonstrates that greater media dependence correlates with higher susceptibility to its messages, affecting cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses (Griffin, 1991, p. 359). The ubiquity and hegemony of media have transformed people into media mongers, with limited capacity to resist its influence.

This dynamic aligns with Chomsky's and Herman's concept of media as a manufacturer of consent through their propaganda model. The powerful consciously leverage media's dominance to advance their interests through systematic opinion formation.

As Herman and Chomsky note, media "serve and propagandize on behalf of the powerful societal interests that control and finance them," with representatives who "have important agendas and principles that they want to advance, and they are well positioned to shape and constrain media policy" (Herman & Chomsky, 1988, p. xi).

Critical media theory, particularly the Frankfurt School with theorists like Adorno and Horkheimer, frames media within the "culture industry" that promotes "mass culture" as "a system of social control, manipulation, and ideology that serves to reproduce the existing system of corporate capitalism" (Hammer & Kellner, 2009, p. xxi). Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding theory further illuminates media's capacity to embed dominant values within "the wider socio-cultural and political structure," where messages must be "appropriated as a meaningful discourse and be meaningfully decoded" (Hall et al., 1980, p. 119).

The manufacturing of consent operates through Herman and Chomsky's five filters:

media ownership,
advertising,
media elite sourcing,
flak,
common enemy construction.

These interconnected filters "reinforce one another" (Herman & Chomsky, 1988, p. 2) to shape news content and public opinion. Media ownership privileges economic and political power holders, advertising revenue influences content decisions, elite sources manage information flow, flak mechanisms enforce compliance with power structures, and common enemy narratives serve geopolitical agendas.

This systematic control of media ultimately threatens the democratic principles it purportedly upholds, operating through subtle "ways in which issues are framed; emphasis and omission; privileging of certain sources, perspectives, information over possible alternatives and in the uses of language (verbal and visual) that assists these effects". The result is a sophisticated propaganda model that shapes public consent through carefully crafted technical, linguistic, and visual codes.

Media and the Construction of “Techno-Culture” in Kellner’s Media Culture

Douglas Kellner’s cultural studies approach to media highlights how media culture is profoundly normalized as a shaping force in people’s daily lives. Kellner emphasizes the inseparability of media studies from cultural studies, underscoring the importance of analyzing media within the framework of power relations and discursive practices embedded in media texts. Such a critical approach is essential for deciphering the power dynamics that structure the workings of the media apparatus. It is crucial to dismantle, interrogate, and critique media’s intrinsic texture to uncover subliminal messages that encapsulate ideologies, stereotypes, gender and racial tropes, and geopolitical agendas. These messages are often ingrained in people’s consciousness through the routine act of consuming media images. Examining media through the lenses of cultural studies enables us to understand the multiple cultural and social representations that shape the production of media content. The media are deeply intertwined with people’s cultures, beliefs, and identities; cultural studies, as a political and pedagogical theory, address these issues and concepts that directly concern people’s immediate preoccupations (Hammer & Kellner, 2009, p. x). Beyond offering hermeneutic access to media texts, cultural studies interrogate the power-based and discursive practices embedded in the media landscape.

Douglas Kellner’s book Media Culture serves as a significant trajectory in studying media as a cultural, social, and political apparatus. Kellner deconstructs the media, political, and cultural agendas that influence the fabric of everyday life. In alignment with Herman and Chomsky’s five filters, Kellner effectively demonstrates how media serves the interests of the powerful, legitimizing their political agendas.

From the outset, Kellner argues that,

“a media culture has emerged in which images, sounds, and spectacles help produce the fabric of everyday life, dominating leisure time, shaping political views and social behavior, and providing the materials out of which people forge their identities”.

Media’s role in shaping cultures is undeniable, given its pervasive influence through various platforms and outlets. Since the rise of postmodernism and into the digital age, societies have been defined by their media culture. Kellner observes that media is not only reflexive of societies but also provides “the materials out of which many people construct their sense of class, ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality, of ‘us’ and ‘them’”. Media deeply influences people’s lives in terms of class, race, and cultural identities, all of which are mediated by power relations and normalized through media content.

Prominent media studies scholars, including Stuart Hall, Colin Sparks, and Douglas Kellner, draw from the Marxist theories of Raymond Williams and Louis Althusser to explore how media texts transmit ideology and shape individuals’ “subject positions”. Media provides the frameworks through which dominant cultures are disseminated and legitimized. It would be inaccurate to downplay the central role of media in contemporary societies, which are products of the media industry. As Hodkinson observes, “We live in media culture… a media society”. Marshall McLuhan, in his seminal book Understanding the Media, presciently argued that media is an extension of man, organically linked to human senses. McLuhan’s theory remains a milestone in understanding media culture’s influence on society, particularly its role in reproducing sensory experiences and fostering media dependence.

The fusion of media culture and technology has given rise to what Kellner terms “Techno-Culture.” He defines this as,

“a form of techno-culture that merges culture and technology in new forms and configurations, producing new types of societies in which media and technology become organizing principles”. Technology shapes contemporary life and permeates media culture, normalizing it as “high-tech culture.”

The convergence of media and technology empowers media images and texts to construct cultural identities, behaviors, and worldviews. Kellner metaphorically describes society as being “colonized by media culture”, signifying the irreversible influence of media on social and cultural fabrics.

Drawing on Jean Baudrillard’s media theory, Kellner highlights the centrality of images in media culture. Baudrillard’s concept of “hyperreality” illustrates how media representations create a world of simulacra, wherein reality is supplanted by mediated images. This phenomenon underscores the visual nature of media culture, as individuals seek self-gratification through media images, lifting them into a fantasy realm. Mulvey’s psychoanalytical study of visual pleasure further reinforces the power of media images in structuring consciousness. She observes that media “satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking”. Media culture disseminates consumerist ideals and constructs lifestyles and identities that resonate with contemporary society’s image-saturated reality. As Kellner aptly notes, media culture provides “models for everyday life that replicate consumer ideals and personalities”

Cyberculture: A New Paradigm Shift

The rise of new media has rapidly contributed to the normalization of cyberculture. In the post-broadcast age, the culture of the internet has pervaded contemporary life to become a semiotic signifier of “techno-culture” or cyberculture. New technologies are further participating in normalizing and perpetuating the culture of consumerism and human fascination with image/visual pleasure. Cultural studies do not respond to new technologies as separate technical systems and materials but as new cultural paradigms and patterns that structure the new information society and provide new concepts, definitions, platforms, and ways of life. In this context, Pierre Lèvy (2001), one of the pioneers of cyberculture, argues that:

With the spread of the Internet, new forms of knowledge and new forms of its distribution emerge. These new forms transform not only the ways we manipulate information but the society itself. Cyberculture is synonymous with change. It refers to the set of techniques (material and intellectual), practical habits, attitudes, ways of thinking and values that develop mutually with cyberspace.

Our conception of society and culture has been profoundly altered by cyberspace, the habitat of cyberculture. Traditional media outlets no longer fit in the new society; they have compellingly receded to give way to new digital platforms to which people have massively immigrated.

Societies are now defined by digital technologies, giving rise to digital cultures. Many offline activities have shifted online, creating virtual spaces that transcend traditional limitations. This digital rush reflects a profound transformation in societal, cultural, and ontological realms, redefining concepts like time, space, geography, community, and identity as fluid and dynamic.

Digital technology has “infiltrated the real world,” becoming synonymous with society. As Castells and Cardoso aptly state: “Technology does not determine society; it is society... the network society [is] the social structure resulting from the interaction between the new technological paradigm and social organization at large” (Castells & Cardoso, 2005, p. 3).

The blurring line between offline and online worlds has led to the creation of “Electronic Frontier,” a concept by Howard Rheingold (2000), where online spaces transcend borders, allowing cultures, identities, and texts to flow freely. Douglas Kellner emphasizes the importance of critically conceptualizing how technologies generate new social and cultural spaces, possibly forming a “new public sphere”. These spaces, mediated by new technologies, have led to the emergence of e-society. While Kellner warns against technological determinism, the debate should focus on how technology intricately shapes human life, becoming an uncontested normative practice.

Digital tools, particularly in urban areas, demonstrate the pervasive influence of technology, though it remains subject to power dynamics and media democratization issues. The e-society paradigm has fostered “Techno-Cities,” where virtual communities instill techno-dependence. Rheingold’s research on online communities highlights their emotional impact:

“The idea of a community accessible only via my computer screen sounded cold… but people can feel passionately about e-mail and computer conferences” (Rheingold, 2000, p. 3).

These virtual aggregations have transformed public spheres and merged real and virtual cultures. Immersed in social networks, individuals risk losing physical-world connections, embodying Wiener’s vision of human-machine fusion. This dependency, a symptom of technological determinism, underscores digital technology's reshaping of society.

Despite Douglas Kellner’s objection to the doctrine of technological determinism, I believe that technology has never been so entangled with humans as in contemporary societies, creating new conceptions of techno-cultures and power relations. The world’s social, cultural, political and economic forces are immensely determined by new technologies which are deployed to foreground hegemonic voices and exacerbate the cultural and digital divide. Accordingly, power relations have taken a new shape/configuration in terms of social organizations/institutions and digital media control. Power is still in the hands of those who own technology and control the digital media landscape with its social networking ramifications. Kellner employs the concept of “technocapitalism” to epitomize the increasing supremacy of technology: …

As the new organizing principle of society… in which technical and scientific knowledge, automation, computers, and high tech play a role in the process of production…producing as well new modes of societal organization and forms of culture and everyday life. (Kellner, 2003, p. 7)

Conclusion

Media critical theory is imperative for the accurate understanding of power relations, ideologies and hegemonic cultures that permeate media texts. We have clearly learned how culture and media smoothly correlate to produce cultural artefacts and practices that dominate contemporary societies and constitute the very substance of everyday life. For a sound and lucid understanding of today’s societies beyond parochialism or utopianism, it is, in our view, sine qua non to seriously reflect on the power media is exerting on these societies. Media culture does not only shape beliefs, values and behaviours; it is also reflexive of the ways societies operate and sustain social, cultural and economic hierarchies. In this context, we have seen how Herman and Chomsky’s theory of manufacturing consent determines the sweeping power of media outlets in constructing public opinion and propagating hegemonic political practices. The two authors have deftly outlined the multiple stratagems employed by people of power to manipulate the media for propagandistic purposes. The media five filters proposed by Herman and Chomsky represent media as a frenetic machine that seeks to manufacture consent and forge propaganda models through, for example, advertising and the media elite.

Douglas Kellner, in his turn, addresses media discursive power through the concept of techno-culture. By adopting a cultural studies approach, he managed to unravel how the media are profoundly jumbled in people’s lives. Media culture has always been consistently reflexive of power relations that define social organizations and create cultural, technological and economic divides. Media texts and images are not raw or unmediated materials; they are immensely loaded with ideologies, stereotypes and political agendas of the powerful elite.

Media must be conceived beyond its core function of communication and entertainment. Critical theory has been highly instrumental in transcending this parochial and cryptic attitude by dismantling media texts to decipher hidden messages and cliched positions. The normalization and ubiquity of digital media have further heightened the crucial necessity of media critical theory to reflect on the extent to which contemporary societies have been infiltrated by digital culture/technology.

Work Cited

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Assignment Paper No. 205: Exploring the Relationship between Media and Culture: A Cultural Studies Perspective