Gramsci and Hegemony

“Hegemony is the process by which we learn to embrace enthusiastically a system of beliefs and practices that end up harming us and working to support the interests of others who have power over us.” (Brookfield, 2005) Antonio Gramsci “Everything which influences or is able to influence public opinion, directly or indirectly, belongs to it; libraries, schools, associations and clubs of various kinds, even architecture and the layout and names of streets.” (Gramsci, 1985. Pg385) According to the Marxist sociologist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) '[...] the rule of one class over another does not depend on economic or physical power alone but rather on persuading the ruled to accept the system of beliefs of the ruling class and to share their social, cultural, and moral values' (cited in Joll 1977: 8). Gramsci called this concept 'hegemony'. Roland Barthes (Mythologies, 1957) was the first to recognise how the 'power of myth' helped to make hegemonic imbalances seem to be 'common sense'. One technique that is used regularly is to label undesired behaviour as 'deviant'.

Encoding /Decoding by Stuart Hall 1980

Just use the first half of this prezi about Stuart Hall. In this model media texts are seen to be encoded in such a way as to present a preferred reading. So that the audience will make sense of it in a certain way. However the audience does not always accept that preferred reading. Dominant – the audience agree Negotiated – the audience generally agree but they may disagree with certain aspects according to their social background Oppositional – the audience disagree

Socio Economic Grading

Burton, HArtley & Fiske

Audience identification theory from Greenshaw High School

George Gerbner Cultivation Theory

George Gerbner’s “Cultivation Theory” has to do with the idea that television has the power to shape our perceptions of reality and the world around us by affecting our attitudes and certain ways of thinking. Gerbner, a well-known communication theorist, and co-authors brought together information and supporting evidence from his Cultural Indicators research to write an article in the Journal of Communication, titled “The ‘Mainstreaming’ of America: Violence Profile No. 11." Through message system analysis, the annual monitoring of specific daytime and prime-time dramatic television programming, and cultivation analysis, the analysis of viewer perceptions in correlation with themes present in the television world, he was able to further elaborate onto the concepts of “mainstreaming” and “resonance.” To get a clearer grasp of how television affects different people, Gerbner broke viewers down in to three categories: light, moderate, and heavy viewers. Through various experiments he discovered that, despite their race or socioeconomic class, people who viewed more television, had more mainstreamed and homogenous views and perceptions that converged with those represented on television shows. One example of this is that heavy viewers from all income categories believed that "fear of crime is a very serious personal problem,” while the opinions of light viewers varied depending on their incomes. He attributes this to the fact that light viewers not only do not accept all the nuanced messages from television, but also receive information and create ideas through different outlets. On the other hand, Gerbner discovered that these heavy viewers did receive most of their information from television, so generally within these groups, “differences deriving from other factors and social forces may be diminished or even absent” (Gerbner 1980). He then explained resonance, another important aspect to his cultivation theory, as the pertinent ideas and themes on television that hold relevance for viewers. These themes “resonate” with them and reinforce ideas that the viewer already holds, in a way giving them a “double dose” of the message and further strengthen their perceptions. If they can relate an experience in their lives with one that they see on television the cultivation of this message would be stronger and they would come to believe that this experience is a very real and common one. These different aspects all join together to form Gerbner’s Cultivation Theory and explain the many important ways that television shapes, influences, and reinforces viewer’s perceptions of social reality. For the full essay see the link below http://www.colorado.edu/communications/meta-discourses/Papers/App_Papers/Gulisano.htm and http://sdsujms408su2011gp2.wikispaces.com/

Credit: http://www.pastdeadline.com/tv_violence_ouch/

Audience - Dyer, Maslow, Blumler & Katz

Audience behaviour theory from Greenshaw High School

Richard Dyer Utopian Solutions

Richard Dyer, lecturer in film for the universities of Keele and Birmingham in Britain, makes a case for entertainment as a utopian sensibility. He says:

 

'The notion of entertainment as in some sense utopian — expressing ideals about how human life could be organized and lived –is implicit in what the most widespread assumption about entertainment, namely, that it provides ‘escape.’

 

Richard Dyer states that people will respond to a media text if it offers them compensation for the inadequacies in their own lives.  Through the media, audiences can vicariously live their lives and fulfill their wants and needs, leading them to strive to a utopian life.

 

Entertainment offers the image of ‘something better’ to set against the realities of day-to-day existence. - 3 reasons why audiences choose to consume media

 

1) social tension
2) inadequacy
3) absence

Dyer’s Utopian theory is linked with the Uses and Gratifications theory:

-audiences consume media products with a clear set of pleasures to draw from that experience

 

- Utopian theory—> gratification that allows people to escape from their real lives

  -reality—> full of negatives and unfulfillment. 

- the ‘mediated ‘ world represents an escape

 

http://ionelabolea.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/dyers-utopian-theory/

Young & Rubicam's Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation (4Cs for short)

The 4Cs is a consumer segmentation that 'characterises' people into recognisable stereotypes that reflect the operation of each of a set of well-known human motivations: comprising SECURITY, CONTROL, STATUS, INDIVIDUALITY, FREEDOM, SURVIVAL and ESCAPE. If you are new to the 4Cs and would like to read more, please download our introductory booklet that gives you some background and explains a little more about the characterisations we use. You can also take one of our online questionnaires if you would like to find out which 4Cs values have the strongest influence on the way you live your life.  http://www.4cs.yr.com

Y&R's Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation (4Cs for short) is a consumer segmentation that 'characterises' people into recognisable stereotypes that reflect the operation of each of a set of well-known human motivations: comprising SECURITY, CONTROL, STATUS, INDIVIDUALITY, FREEDOM, SURVIVAL and ESCAPE. If you are new to the 4Cs and would like to read more, please download our introductory booklet that gives you some background and explains a little more about the characterisations we use. You can also take one of our online questionnaires if you would like to find out which 4Cs values have the strongest influence on the way you live your life. You do not need to be registered with the site in order to access the questionnaires.

Hierarchy of Needs in Ratatouille

Maslow Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow wanted to understand what motivates people. He believed that individuals possess a set of motivation systems unrelated to rewards or unconscious desires.
Maslow (1943) stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs. When one need is fulfilled a person seeks to fulfil the next one, and so on.
The earliest and most widespread version of Maslow's (1943, 1954) hierarchy of needs includes five motivational needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid.  http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html this link also includes the expanded version of Maslow's Hierarchy in a twenty minute lecture style video.

Overview of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

BBC & The British Class survey

Take a look around the website of  The Great British Class Survey to find out the answers and upload to your blog for next week.

John Cleese sketch on class

VALS "Values, Attitudes And Lifestyles"

VALS is a  research methodology used for psychographic (the study of personality, values, attitudes, interests,) and lifestyles market segmentation. Market segmentation is designed to guide companies in tailoring their products and services in order to appeal to the people most likely to purchase them.

Take the and find out what you are. survey  and find out what you are.

Two-Step Flow

2. Two-Step Flow

The Hypodermic model quickly proved too clumsy for media researchers seeking to more precisely explain the relationship between audience and text. As the mass media became an essential part of life in societies around the world and did NOT reduce populations to a mass of unthinking drones, a more sophisticated explanation was sought.

Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet analysed the voters' decision-making processes during a 1940 presidential election campaign and published their results in a paper called The People's Choice. Their findings suggested that the information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience unmediated but is filtered through "opinion leaders" who then communicate it to their less active associates, over whom they have influence. The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but by a two step flow. This diminished the power of the media in the eyes of researchers, and caused them to conclude that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpreted texts. This is sometimes referred to as the limited effects paradigm.

• Katz & Lazarsfeld: Two Step Flow - Mick Underwood

http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevkeyconcepts/alevelkeycon.php?pageID=audience

War of the Worlds HG Wells

For a report about what happened when the War of the Worlds was broadcast.

Audience

Audience theory provides a starting point for many Media Studies tasks. Whether you are constructing a text or analysing one, you will need to consider the destination of that text (i.e. its target audience) and how that audience (or any other) will respond to that text.

Remember that a media text in itself has no meaning until it is read or decoded by an audience.
For GCSE, you learned how audience is described and measured. Now you need a working knowledge of the theories which attempt to explain how an audience receives, reads and responds to a text. Over the course of the past century or so, media analysts have developed several effects models, ie theoretical explanations of how humans ingest the information transmitted by media texts and how this might influence (or not) their behaviour.

Effects theory is still a very hotly debated area of Media and Psychology research, as no one is able to come up with indisputable evidence that audiences will always react to media texts one way or another. The scientific debate is clouded by the politics of the situation: some audience theories are seen as a call for more censorship, others for less control. Whatever your personal stance on the subject, you must understand the following theories and how they may be used to deconstruct the relationship between audience and text.

Hypodermic Needle theory

1. The Hypodermic Needle Model
Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. It is a crude model (see picture!) and suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data. Don't forget that this theory was developed in an age when the mass media were still fairly new - radio and cinema were less than two decades old. Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a message, and produced propaganda to try and sway populaces to their way of thinking. This was particularly rampant in Europe during the First World War (look at some posters here) and its aftermath.
Basically, the Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciouness of the audience unmediated, ie the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text. This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers. It assumes that the audience are passive and heterogenous. This theory is still quoted during moral panics by parents, politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts (comics in the 1950s, rap music in the 2000s), for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.  


http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevkeyconcepts/alevelkeycon.php?pageID=audience

Lonely Orphan Story

Test your Narrative Theory knowlege

Test your knowledge of Narrative Theory in this Narrative quizlet

Linear, Open, Closed and Circular Structures

What kind of structure(s) would your film trailer use?

Narrative Revision

Narrative theory from jphibbert1979

Todorov - Equilibrium

 

For more visit  Todorov animation

Narrative Theory animation

Binary Oppositions - Levi Strauss and Barthes - Symbolic Codes

Levi-Strauss and Barthes were fascinated by Saussure’s realisation that meaning (and thus any concept of what we call reality) can exist only at the level of idea. At the core of this is the recognition that any meaning we attribute to a thing can neither be inherent in the thing itself nor be something we arrive at independently; instead, meaning must always be, at least in part, a ‘construct’ and a ‘given’, i.e. something we learn from others for more on this look at binary opposition.pdf

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Narrative Christopher Booker and The Seven Basic Plots

The Seven Basic Plots

Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots is a long book. You can also get a good dose of Jungian psychology to boot. Booker likes to talk about the symbolism of the masculine and feminine aspects of a character. Below are Booker's The Seven Basic Plots

Summary                                                                             Overcoming the Monster                                                                    Hero learns of a great evil threatening the land, and sets out to destroy it.

Rags to Riches

Surrounded by dark forces who suppress and ridicule him, the Hero slowly blossoms into a mature figure who ultimately gets riches, a kingdom, and the perfect mate.

The Quest

Hero learns of a great MacGuffin that he desperately wants to find, and sets out to find it, often with companions.

Voyage and Return

Hero heads off into a magic land with crazy rules, ultimately triumphs over the madness and returns home far more mature than when he set out.

Comedy

Hero and Heroine are destined to get together, but a dark force is preventing them from doing so; the story conspires to make the dark force repent, and suddenly the Hero and Heroine are free to get together. This is part of a cascade of effects that shows everyone for who they really are, and allows two or more other relationships to correctly form.

Tragedy

The flip side of the Overcoming the Monster plot. Our protagonist character is the Villain, but we get to watch him slowly spiral down into darkness before he's finally defeated, freeing the land from his evil influence.

Rebirth

As with the Tragedy plot, but our protagonist manages to realize his error before it's too late, and does a Heel-Face Turn to avoid inevitable defeat.

Which plot(s) would you say that your film falls into?

Barthes Narrative Codes

Test your knowledge of Barthes Narrative 5 Codes with this quizlet

Student exam blog links

Emmy Exam  Blog
Alice Exam Blog
Emily Exam Blog
Claire Exam Blog
Jo Exam Blog

To do list - up date Section 1 blog - Deadline Tueday November 12

Please ensure that you have moved your blog postings over to Blogger from Tumblr and uploaded your post-it animations. Section 1 a is all the work we did before the Summer holidays and should be up on your blogs by next Tuesday.

Section 1 b - you should have completed Genre - notes from your readings, one or two quizlets and a suitable quote about genre this is work from last half term and needs to be posted for next Tuesday as well.

Syuzhet and Fabula

The fabula is "the raw material of a story, and syuzhet, the way a story is organized."

Fabula refers to the chronological sequence of events in a narrative; syuzhet or sjuzhet is the re-presentation of those events (through narration, metaphor, camera angles, the re-ordering of the temporal sequence, and so on). The distinction is the  equivalent to that between story and discourse, and was used by the Russian Formalists, an influential group of structuralists.To find out more about the difference between syuzhet-fabula have a look at these examples.

The terms were firts used in this sense by Vladimir Propp and Viktor Shklovsky(film critic, screenwriter and literary theorist)