Chandler & Munday

new media An umbrella term that first emerged in the 1980s loosely referring to computer-based media. The term applies to a wide range of phenomena and practices: new kinds of texual forms and *entertainment pleasures (*videogames, the *internet, *virtual worlds); new patterns of media *consumption (*convergence, *hypertext, *sit forward and sit back); new ways of representing the world (*blogs, *digitalization, *photoshopping), the self (*avatar, personal homepage), and community (*bulletin boards, *chatrooms, *social networking); new relationships between media producers and consumers (*file sharing, gift economy, *participatory culture, *user-generated content), and new *phenomenological experiences (embodiment, immersion, *presence). New media tend to blue the distinction between *interpersonal and *mass communication (*desktop publishing, *narrowcasting, *public and private spheres); theorists are still debating whether the *mobile phone is a mass medium…..Despite a wide consensus about the term’s shortcomings, its continued use indicates that there is still an unresolved debate about the nature and impact of new *communication technologies. (p.293)

Abercrombie and Longhurst

new media Media of communication based upon digital technology and access to the internet. Within the last two or three decades, the production, distribution and consumption of media of all kinds have been substantially transformed by NEW INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES. There changes have also been associated by alterations and relaxations in the regime of REGULATION.

As far as production is concerned, the use…has made the production process….more streamlined and efficient….The use of digital technologies has also led to MEDIA CONVERGENCE. Because images, film, text and music are all stored and transmitted digitally, it is much easier to mix material from different media.

The consumption of media has also been transformed by new technology…. In addition, the PERSONALIZATION of media is becoming common…. The distribution of media, in other words, is changing. People do not have to gather round an object of some kind at a pre-determined time….

Technological and regulatory changes are beginning to have an effect(p.243) on business models employed by media companies…Media organized around digital production, distribution and consumption can go for smaller and more specialized audiences. Anderson (2006) argues that the internet makes possible the development of NICHE MEDIA  and NICHE MARKETING: it is now possible to sell economically very small numbers of any product and to keep them for sale indefinitely….

Claims are also made for the potential participative, interactive and democratic possibilities of new media, sometimes comparing their impact to the appearance of the printed BOOK. The traditional media essentially address their audiences, while the new media interact with them…..In this sense, the new media will recreate that PUBLIC SPHERE that the traditional media helped to establish in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but which has subsequently become lost.

it is still unclear how radically new the effects will be in respect of content, audience reaction and  the(p.244)  structure of the industries. For example, much of the material available on the internet is actually taken from more traditional media….The internet, in other words, is simply being used as a means of distribution rather than the means of enabling a new media form.(p.245)

Abercrombie, Hill & Turner

New Information and Communication Technologies (NICT) Within the last thirty or forty years of the development of new technologies has radically changed the way in which media industries produce and distribute content and the manner in which audiences relate to that content. The main driver for these changes is the greatly increased use of digital technologies. (p.268)

All media–print, sound, film… use digital platforms for many aspects of their production process. This makes production easier, cheaper and faster….Cross-media ownership therefore becomes financially sensible. These changes have had a major impact on the working lives of employees in the media industries. For example, production in most print media traditionally… carried out by a specialized and skilled person…The process is now much less fragmented: text is entered by the author, and fewer, specialized and relatively expensive staff are employed.

Digital platforms to some extent allow audiences to interact with the media. They also permit audience involvement in production…. More significant, however, is the reduced cost and the increase in choice for the audience….

…new information and communication technologies have an impact on social relations more generally. It is claimed that such digital technologies…will have significant consequences for social behaviour, creating a networked or distributed society. (p.269)

Scott and Marshall pp.286-287

Globalization theory examines the emergence of a global cultural system. It suggests that global culture is brought about by a variety of social and cultural developments: the existence of a world-satellite information system; the emergence of global patterns of consumption and consumerism; the cultivation of cosmopolitan life-styles; the emergence of global sport such as the Olympic Games, world football competitions, and international tennis matches; the spread of world political systems such as the League of Nations and the United Nations; the creation of global political movements such as Marxism; extension of the concept of human rights; and the complex interchange between world religions. More importantly, globalism involves a mew consciousness of the world as a single place.

/

Chandler and Munday pp.175-176

consequently geographical boundaries become unsustainable.

/

For Giddens, a multicausal process aligned with *modernity, the progress of which appears to be inexorable but autonomous arenas: capitalism, *surveillance, military order, and industrialism, which are insulated from one another.

Gandesha (2001)

Horkheimer and Adorno refuse to ground their critique of the present on a more authentic or primordial past; rather, they turn the force of critique against past and present simultaneously. The clue that Horkheimer and Adorno understand the dialectic of enlightenment in such terms is discernible in their elaborate deployment of visual tropes throughout the text. For instance, in the Preface, they declare… that enlightenment manifests ‘false clarity’ which is in actuality ‘only another name for myth’ (1988: 3). (p.111)

Referring to Xenophanes, Montaigne, Hume, Feuerbach and others, Horkheimer and Adorno (1988: 7, trans. amended) argue that enlightenment has always sought to distance itself from myth by emphasizing myth’s illegitimate anthropomorphism… (p.111-112) at the very moment that it seeks to critique the illegitimate anthropomorphism of mythology, enlightenment casts a mythical spell of its own. …. Enlightenment becomes yet another repetition of the same in the form of the categories  of subjective reason. (p.112)

Just as Oedipus’ ability to disenchant and master the Sphinx is conditional on his inability to know the truth about himself, enlightenment’s inability to engage in self-reflection leads to a repetition of mythology. On the face of it this is a peculiar argument given the fact that the modern Enlightenment reaches its apotheosis in Critical Idealism which, of course, aims at a rational critique of reason with a view to establishing its limitations. However,… for Horkheimer and Adorno, the sacrifice of self-reflection in Kant’s case lies in his understanding of subjectivity, not as a product of historical becoming, but rather in its transcendental deduction, and therefore its reification. (p.117)

Robert Hullot-Kentor (1992)

[Dialectic of Enlightenment]’s first two essays, “The Concept of Enlightenment” and “Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment,”are the most closely inter- constructedof the studies collected in the volume because they develop this thesis indirectly complementary fashion:the first essay presents a history of fear from the primordial scream of terror in the face of overwhelming nature to positivism,in which thought is restricted to the standard of the mastery of nature and thus reduced to nature; the second essay shows how in the figure of Odysseus the rationality of individual identity took shape as a process of adaptation to the mythic a world against which it fear fully struggled. Fear is the inner reflex of self-identity(whether conceptual or individual),which develops as identitywithwhat it strives to dominate.  (pp.102-103)

Enlightenment is often used by historians to refer to a specific period (circa 1660–1800 – from the foundation of the Royal Society to Kant) which emphasized a certain set of values – let us refer to this as the historical concept of the Enlightenment.

Adorno’s concept of enlightenment relates to the historical one in the sense that he conceptualizes it primarily on the basis of the ideas of those writing during the ‘historians’ era’: Adorno mainly uses the ideas of Kant.4 However, he also uses the notion of enlightenment in a way that extends it well beyond that which any historians would accept.

…

enlightenment, for Adorno, is defined according to its aims. The principal aim of the enlightenment is the acqui- sition of knowledge which is coupled to the attainment of maturity and to a set of further aims, namely, freedom, security and peace – all of which con- stitute, for the enlightenment, progress.

The enlightenment’s self-conception is formed in contrast with what Adorno believes the enlightenment regards as another kind of ‘culture’, that of myth. Adorno writes: ‘the program of the enlightenment was the disen- chantment of the world; the dissolution of myths and the substitution of knowledge for fancy’ (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1979: 3). Mythic culture is permeated by a certain set of attitudes which differ from the enlightenment in that they are not derived from a set of aims. Myth does not, according to Adorno, set out with any aims at all. As a culture it simply is what it is.

According to Adorno this is a ‘false’ system of knowledge acquisition for it is coupled to immaturity and the further features of domination, an expression of fear, barbarism, all of which constitute regression (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1979: 43–80).

(p.36)

According to Adorno the enlightenment sees itself as having transcended myth; as having overcome myth’s negative features of domination, fear, bar- barism and regression. The enlightenment’s entire self-conception is formed in opposition to myth. However, for Adorno, the enlightenment fails and regresses into myth. This regression is what the enlightenment itself would conceive of as a regression into its absolute opposite and thus a sign of com- plete failure. Adorno’s critique is that the enlightenment becomes myth and the basis of this is, he argues, an epistemological failure.

….

Because knowledge acquisition turns out not to be an end but a means, Adorno refers to it as instrumental knowledge acquisition.

(p.37)

Mathematics, according to Adorno, is the purest form of instru- mental abstraction. It too comes to be taken as meaningful (B). For Adorno, the enlightenment equates all possible kinds of meaning with meaning (A). Adorno writes: ‘enlightenment . . . is the philosophy which equates the truth with scientific systematization’ (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1979: 85). (‘Truth’ for Adorno in this context refers to all possible kinds of meaning.)

Instrumental knowledge thus becomes deluded about its own nature. The feature of delusion that begins with the narcissistic satisfaction of the id- drives spreads further into the sphere of the ego-drives.

(p.47)

Dictionary of Media Studies — p.85; p.143; p.69; p.5

Critical theory is concerned to critique and supersede traditional or desperate ways of theorizing and to promote social and cultural change. …. A critical theory would want to consider why the audience are watching in the way that they do and would criticize the nature of the reasons given for their responses by the audience as not reaching deeper levels of understanding of the motivation of the audience. In particular, audience responses would likely be seen as rationalised and standardised into particular forms by the control of people’s minds and behaviour by the cultural industries.

/

The Frankfurt School, in developing CRITICAL THEORY, was a key site of the reformulation of Marxism to accord greater weight to cultural themes.This meant looking to the effects of culture in the reproduction of forms of consciousness and culture that supported the rationalizing thrust of an increasingly bureaucratic and technocratic capitalism. … The Frankfurt writers were thus very critical of the nature and effects of mass culture, which they saw as commodified and thus likely to lead to the incorporation of the masses into a restricted mode of capitalist thinking.

In media studies, some commentators , such as T.W.ADORNO, see commodification as producing standardized products which are consumed by passive audiences Critics of commodification suggest that goods and practices that were originally produced in local communities in response to real needs are now produced by cultural industries to satisfy desires that have been bred by, for example, advertising.

/

Adorno, like other members of the School, criticized what he regarded as capitalist control over social and cultural life and the inequalities, oppression and injustice that his caused. … Adorno thought that listeners to popular music also respond in standardized ways. … In this view the pleasures of popular music are superficial and false. … his account and the wider work with Horkheimer remain an important starting point for many analyses of popular music (and other media).

Dictionary of Sociology – Penguin p.89; p.155; p.300

[critical theory] is often equated with the FRANKFURT SCHOOL of critical sociology in the twentieth century, but the notion of criticism is clearly older and more comprehensive than this simple equation would suggest. Criticism means the exercise of negative judgement, especially concerning manners, literature or cultural cultural in general. Textual criticism developed as a weapon of religious conflict during the Reformation, when biblical criticism was held to be a negative but objective judgement on conventional ecclesiastical practice and dogma. Criticism then came to mean uncovering hidden assumptions and debunking their claims to authority, as well as simple fault-finding. G. Hegel saw human history as a progression of human self-awareness which constantly transformed and went beyond existing social constraints. In Hegelian philosophy, therefore, criticism was more than a negative judgement and was given the positive role of detecting and unmasking existing forms of belief in order to enhance the emancipation of human beings in society.

….

The development of critical theory by the Frankfurt School arose out of their dissatisfaction with the use of ‘criticisms’ by institutionalized Marxism to legitimate political decisions of the Communist Party. Critical theorists also had a deeper perception of the value and importance of ‘critique’ on its Hegelian form. … Consequently, the Frankfurt School developed an open attitude to any philosophiical tradition which held out the promise of human emancipation through social critique. … The principal target of critical theory, therefore, became the claims of INSTRUMENTAL REASON (in particular, natural science) to be the only valid form of any genuine knowledge. … The result was an account of society which tried to fuse Weber’s view of RATIONALIZATION with Marx’s theory of capitalism, accepting some of the pessimism of the former but with some of the liberating potential of the latter.

…

In common with other critical theorists, [Habermas] is interested in self-emancipation from domination.

/

The Frankfurt School provided an essentially pessimistic view of contemporary society: rationalization provides an iron discipline and capitalism a set of exploitative social relations.

….

The critique of POSITIVISM. Members of the Frankfurt School took issue with the epistemology that they saw as dominant in Western society, namely positivism, which regards knowledge as rooted in, and testable by, sense experience.

/

Members of the FRANKFURT SCHOOL were early critics of positivism, particularly in American sociology. They felt that positivism tended to stop at producing quantified facts and did not go deeper towards genuine sociological interpretation. … HABERMAS has argued that positivism in social science is an aspect of RATIONALIZATION and is associated with the requirement to control societies.

Oxford Dictionary of Sociology p.145; p.8

[the origins of critical theory] can be traced back through Hegelianism and Western Marxism generally.

…

critical theorists maintain that the source of our knowledge an d the source of our common humanity is the fact that we are all rational beings.

/

In the face of modern culture, [Adorno] was concerned at the outset to avoid the subjectivism of *existentialism and easy objectivism of *positivism, but this modified as he became more pessimistic about the modern world.

…

his view of modernity [states] that the notion of totality was once part of a liberating philosophy, but over the last century has been absorbed into a totalizing *social system, a real or potentially *totalitarian regime. Against this we must not seek knowledge, but emphasise paradox and ambiguity; temporarily, at least, truth might lie in the experience of the individual.

Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy pp.6-7

[Adorno’s] work belonged mainly to sociology, and was especially concerned with the contradictions and distortions imposed upon people by the post-Enlightenment world, with its sacrifice of life to instrumental, technological reasoning. …. The Authoritarian Personality (1950) [describes] the rigid, conformist personality-type, submissive to higher authority and bullying towards inferiors. Adorno’s celebration of paradox and ambiguity, as well as his pessimistic take on the *Enlightenment, have been influential in postmodernist literary and cultural criticism.

Dictionary of Philosophy – Penguin p.7; p.482

The important Dialektik der Aufklärung 1947 …, written together with Horkheimer, argues that once reason triumphed over myth and gained control over nature, the individual’s subjection to nature was replaced by the social domination of the individual, and Enlightenment philosophy was therefore bound to harbour totalitarian tendencies.

/

Positivism has been strongly attacked by theologians, Marxist-Leninists, feminists, etc. for being atheistic, bourgeois, androcentric, etc. ‘Positivism’ is one of those philosophical terms which, like ‘metaphysics’, ‘reductionism’ and ‘scholasticism’, have come to be freely used for polemical purposes in senses that do not readily allow a clear definition.

Dictionary of Critical Theory p.303

[Positivism is] linked to the rise of sociology; the word sociology was coined by Comte in 1830, and defined as meaning ‘social physics’.

…

A Little History of Philosophy p.127

Hegel believed that in his own lifetime a crucial stage in history had been reached.

Oxford Dictionary of Media and Communication p.330-331

Postmodernism does not constitute a unified ‘theory’ (though many postmodernist theorists grant no access to any reality outside *signification). Nor is there a postmodernist aesthetic ‘movement’; postmodernism is highly fragmented and eclectic. However, characteristic features of postmodern texts and practices are… blurring the boundaries of *texts, *genres, and *media and drawing attention to the text’s *constructedness and process of construction… The postmodernist trend is sometimes dated from Lyotard’s book, The Postmodern Condition, first published in 1979, which characterized postmodernist theory in terms of incredulity towards metanarratives.

[Postmodernity is a] relational term (see MODERNITY) for the social-eonomic and political transformation of modern advanced industrial capitalism… is associated with trends such as *globalization (global capitalism), a shift from *production to *consumption, the fragmentation of the *mass market (see AUDIENCE FRAGMENTATION), and the decline of the nation-state… [is a] *cultural and *ideological shift from a world of relatively stable *values, beliefs, *theories, and organizational structures to a world of flux, *fragmentation, *ambiguity, and radical scepticism (which critics see as *relativism). Lyotard notes the demise of modernity’s *grand narrative of progress.

Dictionary of Philosophy – Penguin pp.483-484

Jean Baudrillard… claims that contemporary culture is post-modern, the word denotes fragmentation and promiscuous trivialization of values, symbols, images: its most characteristic manifestation id the commercial advertisements shown in television broadcasts.

In architecture, where the word first gained currency, post-modernism denotes a rejection of the functionalism and brutalism of modern architecture… together with a preference for aimless eclecticism… It is said that whereas modernism assumes that there is hidden meaning or truth and is engaged in a search for it, post-modernism, able to recognize absurdity when it sees it, has recourse to pastiche, many-layerd irony, flippancy, etc.

Many critics have rejected post-modernism, and have often done so with great vehemence, because of its association with RELATIVISM of various kinds, which they see as morally repugnant and logically absurd.

cultural relativism… (1)different cultures have different customs, social institutions, moralities, etc,; (2) the view that those who belong to one culture cannot form a valid judgement of any custom, institution, belief, etc. which is part of a culture which differs significantly from their own. The view is that there is no non-relative (‘absolute’) basis from which to judge, and that proper judgements can only be made from inside, i.e. from the standpoint of the culture judged…. Note: ‘Culturaris’ is occasionally used for this view. (p.132)

Oxford Dictionary of Sociology pp.584-586

The emphasis on plurality, diversity, and relativity encouraged some intellectuals to promote a wider reconstruction of thought… [W]hat it is that this body of theory… has in common, is certainly much less settled.

What [Lyotard] did that was new to declare that post-modernism was a generic social condition…; it is a condition in which there is a widespread if belated recognition that the two major myths or ‘meta-narratives’ that have legitimated scientific z9including social scientific) activity for the past two hundred years, are no longer widely believed.

On the one hand,’The Myth of Liberation’ has been rendered incredible by the complicity of all the sciences in the great crimes of the 20th century, including the Holocaust, the Soviet gulags, and the creation of weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction…. The net result of such a generalized ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives’, according to Lyotard, is that the inhabitants of advanced capitalist societies now live in a world in which the following is the case: there are no guarantees as to either the worth of their activities or the truthfulness of their statements; there are only ‘language games’; and there are no economic constraints on the cultural realm.

Postmodernity… denies the existence of all ‘universals’, including the philosophy of the transcendental self, on the grounds that the discourse and referential categories of modernity (the subject, community, the state, use-value, social class, and so forth) are no longer appropriate to the description of disorganized capitalism. There is instead a new culture of ‘paralogy’–of imagination, inventiveness, dissensus, the search for paradox, and toleration of the incommensurable.

p.642-643

relativism The word relativism is used loosely to describe intellectual positions which reject  absolute or universal standards or criteria. …. [Feyerabend] sees a world increasingly dominated by a Western industrial-scientific way of life, which eliminates cultural diversity, destroys the environment, and impoverishes life.

Dictionary of Sociology – Penguin p.302-303

INDUSTRIALIZATION and the economic system of CAPITALISM brought with them a system of social classes… In postmodern societies, … social classes are no longer so important. The social structure is more fragmented and complex, with a number of sources of differentiation, including CLASS, but also including gender, ethnicity and age.

Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy pp.283-284

In philosophy, therefore, it implies a mistrust of the grands récits od modernity: the large-scale justifications of Western society and confidence in its progress visible in *Kant, *Hegel, or *Marx, or arising from *utopian visions of perfection achieved through evolution, social improvement, education, or the deployment of science. In its *poststructuralist aspects it includes a denial of any fixed meaning, or any correspondence between language and the world, or any fixed reality or truth or fact to be the object of enquiry.

Oxford Dictionary of Media and Communication p.126

It is widely regarded as the foundation of modern Western intellectual culture, most clearly marked by the radical questioning of traditional modes of thought and authority, the growth of secularism, the rejection of religious dogma and superstition, a belief in social progress through the pursuit of reason and science, and an emphasis on individual freedom of expression. Habermas sees the Enlightenment as witnessing the rise of the (bourgeois) public sphere… Nevertheless, the French and American revolutions and the abolition of slavery had their philosophical roots in Enlightenment principles of equality and natural rights. This was the era of compilation of the first modern encyclopaedias, demonstrating the thirst for [knowledge] and understanding based on triumph of rational thought.

Post-Enlightenment thinking by *poststructuralists and *postmodernists since the Second World War has reflected intellectual disquiet in particular over the legacy of overconfidence in reason, progress, and universal truths (e.g. Foucault, Lyotard). Marxist theorists (Adorno, Horkheimer) have argued that Enlightenment reason has been reduced to *instrumental reason and rationalization in *mass society

Dictionary of Philosophy – Penguin pp.187-188

Critics of the Enlightenment have accused it of cold-hearted neglect of important values: of tradition, of community, of attachments and commitments which even if they are non-rational should not be rejected as irrational. In the 1940s, Horkheimer and Adorno claimed in Dialectic of Enlightenment that the Enlightenment ideals of rationality and criticism had their natural conclusion in the cynicism and brutality of de Sade’s fantasies. Certain Marxist writers have dismissed Enlightenment thought as being essentially bourgeois, and certain feminist writers have regarded it as essentially deist…. The brief that progress is historically inevitable now has few supporters, but the belief that something can be done to improve the human condition, and the demand that human dignity and human rights be respected, remain part of living but contested intellectual tradition.

Dictionary of Sociology – Penguin p.132

often referred to as the ‘Age of Reason’… These critical, secular ideas played a crucial role in the emergence of modern societies.. In the twentieth century, the Enlightenment has been criticised as a movement which was in fact intolerant of individual differences and cultural variation. FEMINISM has criticized Enlightenment  ideas as presenting a view of reality which is biased by one-sided male values. A self-confident, robust commitment to Reason is uncommon in late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century thought.

Oxford Dictionary of Sociology pp.218-219

Overall, however, it is equated with a *materialist view of humanity, an optimism about the possibility of rational and scientific knowledge, progress through education, and a *utilitarian approach to ethics and society. Theodor *Adorno and Max Horkheimer have argued in The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1972) that there is a hidden logic of domination and oppression behind Enlightenment rationality.

Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy pp.115-116

Although it is difficult to find positive doctrines common to all these thinkers, the Enlightenment is associated with a materialist view of human beings, an optimism about their progress through education and science, and a generally *utilitarian approach to sicuety and ethics… It has been fashionable in *postmodernist circles to talk of the Enlightenment as having had a project, and one which has failed, but the meaning of this criticism remains unclear.

Dictionary of Critical Theory p.111

Enlightenment philosophy is critical to all forms of traditional authority, and particularly of those associated with religion and feudalism… Once the particularisms of local customs and beliefs are stripped away, a universal humanity will be revealed, and that humanity will be capable of infinite perfectibility.

….

Philosophers such as Kant regarded the Enlightenment as a linear and irreversible process, but later writers such as ADORNO and HORKHEIMER argue that it was a DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT with contradictory and sometimes dangerous effects. A wakeful reason, that is, can produce monsters of its own. The precise nature of the Enlightenment, the supposed universality of its values (rationality, tolerance, equality of rights) and the worth of its GRAND NARRATIVES of emancipation continue to be debated in discussions of the origins of modernity involving thinkers as diverse as HABERMAS and FOUCAULT. For LYOTARD, scepticism about the Enlightenment’s GRAND NARRATIVES, which promise that humanity will be liberated by rational knowledge, is one of the hallmarks of the age of POSTMODERNITY.

Enlightenment of GrandNarrrrrrrrrrativeeeas

– Progress

– Equality

– Freedom, emancipation

– Secular thought science

Postmodernists:

Legitimation crisis (e.g. secularism)

relativity

truth

Why is the enlightenment a major part of critical theory? What are the postmodern challenges to the enlightenment?

How do media theories help us to understand notions of identity and psychoanalysis?