MEDIA, CULTURE AND SOCIETY (THEORY)

THIRD YEAR

VI SEMESTER

PAPER XX– MEDIA, CULTURE & SOCIETY

Duration of Examination: 3 hrs

Maximum Marks: 100

Credits: 3

Unit 1

Functions of media, Understanding mass media. Characteristics of mass media, Power of mass media. Media in Indian society.

Unit 2

Media Audience analysis (mass, segmentation, product etc, social uses). Audience making. Active Vs Passive audience: Some theories of audience, Effects of mass media on individual, society and culture-basic issues.

Unit 3

Media as text. Approaches to media analysis- Marxist, Semiotics, Sociology, Psychoanalysis, Media and realism (class, gender, race, age, minorities, children etc.)

Unit 4

Media as consciousness Industry. Social construction of reality by media, Rhetoric of the image, narrative etc. Media myths (representation, stereotypes etc.)—Cultural studies approach to media, audience as textual determinant and audience as readers, audience

Positioning, establishing critical autonomy.

Unit 5

Media and Popular culture---commodities, culture and sub-culture, popular texts, popular discrimination, politics popular culture Vs people’s culture, celebrity industry- personality as brand name, hero-worship etc. Traditional media and culture.

Reference:

q  Potter, James W (1998) Media Literacy, Sage Publications

q  Grossberg, Lawrence et al (1998) Media-Making, Mass Media in a popular culture. Sage Publications

q  Berger, Asa Authur (1998). Media Analysis Technique Sage Publications

MEDIA CULTURE AND SOCIETY

Functions of Media

Following are the major functions of Media

1. Inform

2. Educate

3. Entertain and

4. Invigorate (Activate)

Inform: The media have to inform the masses on the latest developments in the areas of Politics, Economy, Science, Religion, International Affairs, Sports and Entertainment, Weather and Natural Calamities in the form of Local, National and International News and Events.

Educate: Must educate people on their democratic rights, on the recent scientific and technological developments, commodities and services offered by the business houses, on health and hygiene, on their social responsibilities, about maintenance of peace, tranquility and communal harmony, all about educational and employment opportunities etc.,

Entertain: The media should entertain the masses with movies, music, dance, drama, sports and games. Media must also facilitate interaction with different social groups, cultural exchange between peoples of different countries. Cinema as powerful medium not only entertains but also educates and creates awareness among people on different issues plaguing the society.

Invigorate or Activate: The media have to activate people in to exercising their democratic rights and participating in the democratic processes such as Elections, in seeking legal remedies, Right To Information RTI etc. The media are also responsible for activating the politicians and bureaucrats in to delivering their duties and responsibilities to the people and society. Media also activate the Executive, the Legislature, and the Judiciary in addition to activating the Trade, Industry and Commerce. Activating the masses in to healthcare awareness issues like Family Planning, spread and control of Epidemics, Health and Hygiene, Prevention and treatment of dreaded diseases like TB, Polio, Cancer, Hepatitis, STD, AIDS etc.,

Activating the people in to mass uprisals against any oppression or injustice to any section of the society. Championing the cause of the poor, downtrodden,women, children and minorities. Activating any people welfare movements like environment protection, anti nuclear weapons or anti WMD campaign, Child labour, anti-Sati, Dowry harassments and untouchability etc., at the national and international levels.

Since media is instrumental in delivering the above services to the society they can be rightly called as the agents of development.

UNDERSTANDING MASS MEDIA

The most obvious features of the mass media is that they are designed to reach the many potential audience are viewed as large aggregates of more or less anonymous consumers. The relationship between the sender and receiver is affected accordingly.

The sender is often the organization or a professional communicator.

Example journalist presenter, producer and entertainer etc.,

On another type of voice of the society through the media channels.

Example Advertiser, politicians, preachers, advocate of cause etc.,

The relationship is essentially one directional, one sided and impersonal.

There is social as well as physical distance between the sender and the receiver.

According to Jano Witz 1968”Mass Media comprise the institutions and techniques by which specialized groups employ technical devises(Press, Radio, Film or Television) to disseminate symbolic content to large, heterogenous and widely dispersed audience”

Mass media can be used for individual, private or organizational purposes.

Marxist Media Theory

Ideology

A central feature of Marxist theory is the 'materialist' stance that social being determines consciousness. According to this stance, ideological positions are a function of class positions, and the dominant ideology in society is the ideology of its dominant class. This is in contrast to the 'idealist' stance that grants priority to consciousness (as in Hegelian philosophy). Marxists differ with regard to this issue: some interpret the relationship between social being and consciousness as one of direct determination; others stress a dialectical relationship.

In fundamentalist Marxism, ideology is 'false consciousness', which results from the emulation of the dominant ideology by those whose interests it does not reflect. From this perspective the mass media disseminate the dominant ideology: the values of the class which owns and controls the media. According to adherents of Marxist political economy the mass media conceal the economic basis of class struggle; 'ideology becomes the route through which struggle is obliterated rather than the site of struggle' (Curran et al. 1982: 26).

Althusser rejected the notion of false consciousness, stressing that ideology is the medium through which we experience the world (Curran et al. 1982: 24). Althusserian Marxism stresses the irreducibility and materiality of ideology: i.e., ideology is seen as a determining force in its own right. The ideological operation of the mass media in the West contributes to the reproduction of the capitalist system.

Another Marxist theorist of ideology, Valentin Volosinov, has been influential in British cultural studies. Volosinov argued that a theory of ideology which grants the purely abstract concept of consciousness an existence prior to the material forms in which it is organized could only be metaphysical. Ideological forms are not the product of consciousness but rather produce it. As Tony Bennett notes: 'Rather than being regarded as the product of forms of consciousness whose contours are determined elsewhere, in the economic sphere, the signifying systems which constitute the sphere of ideology are themselves viewed as the vehicles through which the consciousness of social agents is produced' (Bennett 1982: 51).

Clearly, Marxist theorists agree that the mass media has ideological power, but disagree as to its nature.

Media as means of production

The mass media are, in classical Marxist terms, a 'means of production' which in capitalist society are in the ownership of the ruling class. According to the classical Marxist position, the mass media simply disseminate the ideas and world views of the ruling class, and deny or defuse alternative ideas. This is very much in accord with Marx's argument that:

The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. (Marx & Engels: The German Ideology, cited in Curran et al. 1982: 22).

According to this stance, the mass media functioned to produce 'false consciousness' in the working-classes. This leads to an extreme stance whereby media products are seen as monolithic expressions of ruling class values, which ignores any diversity of values within the ruling class and within the media, and the possibility of oppositional readings by media audiences.

Strengths of Marxist analysis

Unlike many approaches to the mass media Marxism acknowledges the importance of explicit theory. Marxist 'critical theory' exposes the myth of 'value-free' social science. Marxist perspectives draw our attention to the issue of political and economic interests in the mass media and highlight social inequalities in media representations. Marxism helps to situate media texts within the larger social formation. Its focus on the nature of ideology helps us to deconstruct taken-for-granted values. Ideological analysis helps us to expose whose reality we are being offered in a media text. Whilst Althusserian Marxism helps to undermine the myth of the autonomous individual, other neo-Marxist stances see the mass media as a 'site of struggle' for ideological meaning, opening up the possibility of oppositional readings.

Marxist theory emphasizes the importance of social class in relation to both media ownership and audience interpretation of media texts: this remains an important factor in media analysis. Whilst content analysis and semiotics may shed light on media content, marxist theory highlights the material conditions of media production and reception. 'Critical political economists' study the ownership and control of the media and the influence of media ownership on media content cannot be ignored. It also remains important to consider such issues as differential access and modes of interpretation which are shaped by socio-economic groupings. Marxist media research includes the analysis of representation in the mass media (e.g. political coverage or social groups) in order to reveal underlying ideologies. We still need such analyses: however oppositional it may sometimes be, audience interpretation continues to operate in relation to such content. Because of the distribution of power in society, some versions of reality have more influence than others.

Limitations of Marxist analysis

Critics argue that Marxism is just another ideology (despite claims by some that historical materialism is an objective science). Some Marxists are accused of being 'too doctrinaire' (see Berger 1982). Fundamentalist Marxism is crudely deterministic, and also reductionist in its 'materialism', allowing little scope for human agency and subjectivity. Marxism is often seen as 'grand theory', eschewing empirical research. However, research in the Marxist 'political economy' tradition in particular does employ empirical methods. And the analysis of media representations does include close studies of particular texts.

The orthodox Marxist notion of 'false consciousness' misleadingly suggests the existence of a reality 'undistorted' by mediation. The associated notion that such consciousness is irresistibly induced in mass audiences does not allow for oppositional readings. Marxist perpectives should not lead us to ignore the various ways in which audiences use the mass media.

Neo-Marxist stances have in fact sought to avoid these pitfalls. The primary Marxist emphasis on class needs to be (and had increasingly been) related to other divisions, such as gender and ethnicity.

Semiotics

Denotation, Connotation and Myth

In semiotics, denotation and connotation are terms describing the relationship between the signifier and its signified, and an analytic distinction is made between two types of signifieds: a denotative signified and a connotative signified. Meaning includes both denotation and connotation.

'Denotation' tends to be described as the definitional, 'literal', 'obvious' or 'commonsense' meaning of a sign. In the case of linguistic signs, the denotative meaning is what the dictionary attempts to provide. For the art historian Erwin Panofsky, the denotation of a representational visual image is what all viewers from any culture and at any time would recognize the image as depicting. Even such a definition raises issues - all viewers? One suspects that this excludes very young children and those regarded as insane, for instance. But if it really means 'culturally well-adjusted' then it is already culture-specific, which takes us into the territory of connotation. The term 'connotation' is used to refer to the socio-cultural and 'personal' associations (ideological, emotional etc.) of the sign. These are typically related to the interpreter's class, age, gender, ethnicity and so on. Signs are more 'polysemic' - more open to interpretation - in their connotations than their denotations. Denotation is sometimes regarded as a digital code and connotation as an analogue code.

As Roland Barthes noted, Saussure's model of the sign focused on denotation at the expense of connotation and it was left to subsequent theorists (notably Barthes himself) to offer an account of this important dimension of meaning. In 'The Photographic Message' (1961) and 'The Rhetoric of the Image' (1964), Barthes argued that in photography connotation can be (analytically) distinguished from denotation. As Fiske puts it 'denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is photographed'. However, in photography, denotation is foregrounded at the expense of connotation. The photographic signifier seems to be virtually identical with its signified, and the photograph appears to be a 'natural sign' produced without the intervention of a code. Barthes initially argued that only at a level higher than the 'literal' level of denotation, could a code be identified - that of connotation (we will return to this issue when we discuss codes). By 1973 Barthes had shifted his ground on this issue. In analysing the realist literary text Barthes came to the conclusion that 'denotation is not the first meaning, but pretends to be so; under this illusion, it is ultimately no more than the last of the connotations (the one which seems both to establish and close the reading), the superior myth by which the text pretends to return to the nature of language, to language as nature'. Connotation, in short, produces the illusion of denotation, the illusion of language as transparent and of the signifier and the signified as being identical. Thus denotation is just another connotation. From such a perspective denotation can be seen as no more of a 'natural' meaning than is connotation but rather as a process of naturalization. Such a process leads to the powerful illusion that denotation is a purely literal and universal meaning which is not at all ideological, and indeed that those connotations which seem most obvious to individual interpreters are just as 'natural'. According to an Althusserian reading, when we first learn denotations, we are also being positioned within ideology by learning dominant connotations at the same time.

Consequently, whilst theorists may find it analytically useful to distinguish connotation from denotation, in practice such meanings cannot be neatly separated. Most semioticians argue that no sign is purely denotative - lacking connotation. Valentin Voloshinov insisted that no strict division can be made between denotation and connotation because 'referential meaning is moulded by evaluation... meaning is always permeated with value judgement'. There can be no neutral, objective description which is free of an evaluative element. David Mick and Laura Politi note that choosing not to differentiate denotation and connotation is allied to regarding comprehension and interpretation as similarly inseparable.

For most semioticians both denotation and connotation involve the use of codes. Structural semioticians who emphasise the relative arbitrariness of signifiers and social semioticians who emphasize diversity of interpretation and the importance of cultural and historical contexts are hardly likely to accept the notion of a 'literal' meaning. Denotation simply involves a broader consensus. The denotational meaning of a sign would be broadly agreed upon by members of the same culture, whereas 'nobody is ever taken to task because their connotations are incorrect', so no inventory of the connotational meanings generated by any sign could ever be complete. However, there is a danger here of stressing the 'individual subjectivity' of connotation: 'intersubjective' responses are shared to some degree by members of a culture; with any individual example only a limited range of connotations would make any sense. Connotations are not purely 'personal' meanings - they are determined by the codes to which the interpreter has access. Cultural codes provide a connotational framework since they are 'organized around key oppositions and equations', each term being 'aligned with a cluster of symbolic attributes'. Certain connotations would be widely recognized within a culture. Most adults in Western cultures would know that a car can connote virility or freedom.

Media and Politics

Contents: Introduction, The relationship, Propaganda and Persuasion, Article: Political campaigns, Article- India shining… Fell Good vs. Fail Good.

Learning Objectives:

􀂙 To understand the interdependence of media and politics.

􀂙 To understand the impact media coverage.

􀂙 To know the changing media habits of the audiences.

INTRODUCTION

Modern politics is largely a mediated politics, experienced by most citizens through their broadcast and print media of choice. Any study of democracy in contemporary conditions is, therefore, also a study of how the media report and interpret political events and issues, and how media itself influences the political processes and shapes public opinion. Thus, media has become central to politics and public life in contemporary democracy.

Access to media is one of the key measures of power and equality. Media can shape power and participation in society in negative ways, by obscuring the motives and interests behind political decisions, or in positive ways, by promoting the involvement of people in those decisions. In this respect the media and governance equation becomes important.

Media occupies a space that is constantly contested, which is subject to organizational and technological restructuring, to economic, cultural and political constraints, to commercial pressures and to changing professional practices. The changing contours of this space can lead to different patterns of domination and agenda-setting and to different degrees of openness and closure in terms of access, patterns of ownership, available genres, types of disclosure and range of opinions represented.

Although it is intrinsically difficult to theorize about the complexities implied in this formulation, the implications of the empirical outcomes of the struggle over this terrain are crucial for the ways in which they help or hinder democratic governance. For this reason journalists and their audiences, when they first read, hear or see news, should always ask the irreverent question: ‘Says who?’ This may be bad news for the official managers of society, but it will be good news for democracy.

In a democratic society, therefore, the role of the media assumes seminal importance. Democracy implies participative governance, and it is the media that informs people about various problems of society, which makes those wielding power on their behalf answerable to them. That the actions of the government and the state, and the efforts of competing parties and interests to exercise political power should be underpinned and legitimized by critical scrutiny and informed debate facilitated by the institutions of the media is a normative assumption uniting the political spectrum.

It has been further remarked by Davis Merritt, in his work Public Journalism and Public Life that what journalists should bring to the arena of public life is knowledge of the rules – how the public has decided a democracy should work – and the ability and willingness to provide relevant information and a place for that information to be discussed and turned into democratic consent. They must exhibit no partisan interest in the specific outcome other than it is arrived at under the democratic process.

The relationship

There exists an intimate relationship between the political processes and the mass media. The functions of mass communication in the sphere of politics are of grave importance to India, since more than anything else, the mass media are fully exploited by our leaders for political propaganda, but the truth is that even the largely private-owned press is charged with political news, biased frequently in favour of one party or another. In the first place, mass communication should provide the citizen the means to understand the substance of policies. Secondly, they should perform an ‘amplifying function’, by giving wide publicity to the actions and views of important individuals.

Thirdly, they should provide the common fund of information necessary for the formation of public opinion and the conduct of the political process. Further, the mass media should attempt to provide standards, by which political actions can be judged, the common frame of reference which must unite rulers and ruled in a democratic political structure. The media, therefore, could help, considerably in public participation in national and regional policies. However, the reality is that the coverage of politics by the mass media is often fragmented and superficial. The sensational and the transient are given predominance over the kind of information relevant to political education about political leaders and parties, which are of great significance to the political outcome.

Propaganda and Persuasion

Persuasion is the art of winning friends and influencing people. It’s an art that does not employ force or deliberate manipulation of people’s minds. Its success depends on rather on attention to and comprehension of the persuader’s message, and acceptance of involuntarily, as well as on the content of the message, the manner of presentation, and other crucial situation/cultural factors.

Propaganda is the deliberate manipulation by means of symbols such ads words, gestures, flags, images, monuments, music and the like, of people’s thoughts or actions with respect to their beliefs, values and behaviors. Propaganda, therefore, is not casual or instructional communication. It is opposed to any free exchange of ideas, for the propagandist never doubts his own beliefs and value system and the necessity of propagating them to others.

Rhetoric of the Image

BARTHES OUTLINES his project: "subjecting the image to a spectral analysis of the messages it can contain" (22). Barthes chooses advertising images as the object of his study "because, in advertising, the image's signification is assuredly intentional."

Levels of analysis

Barthes notes:

• the linguistic level of analysis, in which the verbal text accompanying the ad has both a denotative and a connotative meaning
• a coded iconic image (25), not unlike that noted in "The Photographic Message," in which objects (icons) are placed in a photograph, for their discontinuous symbolic value
• a non-coded iconic message (roughly parallel to the analogic, denotative level discussed in "The Photographic Message")

The linguistic message serves two functions. One Barthes calls "anchoring," in which the text helps the reader choose the right level of perception, or select the correct details to notice (28). There is an ideological component of this function of the text: in relation to the freedom of the images signifieds, the text has a repressive value (29). Another function is relaying additional information: the text serves as a second, supplemental source of information, like dialogue balloons in comic strips, which is necessary for full comprehension of the image (rather than mere focusing of the image).
The purely denoted image, Barthes recognizes, is not possible. However, audiences still recognize the (apparently) analogic relationship between the photographic image and the real world; that connection works to naturalize the advertising image. The denoted image naturalizes the symbolic message, it makes innocent the very dense semantic artifice of connotation (34).
The study of the connotative level Barthes calls "the rhetoric of the mage." There is no fixed system for reading the image, for "the language of the image is not merely the entirety of the utterances emitted . . . it is also the entirety of the utterances received; such language must include the 'surprises' of meaning" (36). Further, the study is young, and as yet lacks any definitive breakdown of the components of connotative meaning. Should such a categorization of the "connotators" be achieved, it will constitute Barthes's "rhetoric."

Larger implications

Above and beyond any semiological project to outline the rhetoric of the connotators, Barthes identifies the tension between the coded, connotative aspects of the image and the uncoded, denotative aspects of the image as reflective of a larger tension. "The world of meaning is torn internally between the system as culture and the syntagm as nature" (40). (David Beard.)

Summary of Rhetoric of the Image

Roland Barthes’ Rhetoric of Image analyzes image, an illustration or a representation of something, and in what ways do meanings are associated with particular images. He examines images, observes the messages it entails, and how these messages are extracted from these images.

In the article, the author restricts his study in the realm of advertising images wherein a specific example is given and investigated. He concentrates on this branch since in advertising, as he clearly states, “the signification of the image is undoubtedly intentional.” The message in an advertising image is pre-conceived and is therefore graspable. An advertising image then has a purpose

Its functions are anchorage and relay. The iconic message is displayed by the pure image, a series of signifiers pertaining to an intended signified.

The author proceeds to exploring the overview of the different types of messages, linguistic, denoted, and connoted. Because in an advertising image, there is a definite message, an intended meaning, Roland Barthes confines his article in this dimension. As one example demonstrates, the advertisement suggests that Panzani’s products are “everything that is necessary for a carefully balanced dish. The advertisement generates a linguistic message characterized by the words and texts that are scattered throughout the ad.

He gives one example of an advertisement of Panzani and looks at the different messages it contains. The message is conveyed not just by reading the text and understating what it says; it is delivered through the carefully selected objects along with the emotion and feeling it produces arranged in a way that is meant to, in the clearest fashion, appeal to its audience.

The linguistic message is contained in titles, slogans, captions, and dialogues. Although the connoted message is touched, Barthes mainly focuses on the denoted message. It tries to answer, “What is it? What is it all about?”

The denoted message answers the question, “What does it mean? What is it saying?” It goes beyond the words that accompany the image. ” The presence of freshly picked vegetables coming from a string bag implies that the product is a complete cooking ingredient. The contents of the ad are painted with yellow and green in a background of red.

Popular culture

Popular culture (or pop culture) is the collection of ideas that are popular, well-liked or common and create the prevailing culture. These ideas are heavily influenced by mass media. Popular culture is the views and perspectives most strongly represented and accepted within a society. Popular culture is also considered to be the widespread cultural elements in any given society that are perpetuated through that society's vernacular language or lingua franca.

Popular culture permeates the everyday lives of the mainstream. It is manifest in preferences and acceptance or rejection of features in such various subjects as cooking, clothing, consumption, and the many facets of entertainment such as sports, music, film and literature. Popular culture often contrasts with a more exclusive, even elitist "high culture",^[1] that is, the culture of ruling social groups.^[2] The earliest use of "popular" in English was during the fifteenth century in law and politics, meaning "low", "base", "vulgar", and "of the common people" 'til the late eighteenth century by which time it began to mean "widespread" and gain in positive connotation. (Williams 1985). "Culture" has been used since the 1950s to refer to various subgroups of society, with emphasis on cultural differences.^[3]

Pop art is art that focuses on or overtly incorporates elements of or products of popular culture.

Popular culture comes under heavy criticism from various sources (most notably religious groups and countercultural groups) which deem it superficial, consumerist, sensationalist and corrupted

The meaning of popular and the meaning of culture are essentially contested concepts and there are multiple competing definitions of popular culture. John Storey, in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, discusses six definitions. The quantitative definition, of culture has the problem that much "high" culture (e.g. television dramatisations of Jane Austen) is widely favoured. "Pop culture" can also be defined as the culture that is "left over" when we have decided what "high culture" is. However, many works straddle or cross the boundaries e.g. William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Puccini-Verdi-Pavarotti- Nessun Dorma. Storey draws attention to the forces and relations which sustain this difference such as the educational system.

A third definition equates pop culture with Mass Culture. This is seen as a commercial culture, mass produced for mass consumption. From a U.K. (and European) point of view, this may be equated to American culture. Alternatively, "pop culture" can be defined as an "authentic" culture of the people, but this can be problematic because there are many ways of defining the "people." Story argues that there is a political dimension to popular culture; neo-Gramscian hegemony theory "... sees popular culture as a site of struggle between the 'resistance' of subordinate groups in society and the forces of 'incorporation' operating in the interests of dominant groups in society." A postmodernism approach to popular culture would "no longer recognise the distinction between high and popular culture'

Storey emphasises that popular culture emerges from the urbanisation of the industrial revolution, which identifies the term with the usual definitions of 'mass culture'. Studies of Shakespeare (by Weimann, Barber or Bristol, for example) locate much of the characteristic vitality of his drama in its participation in Renaissance popular culture, while contemporary practitioners like Dario Fo and John McGrath use popular culture in its Gramscian sense that includes ancient folk traditions (the commedia dell'arte for example).

Popular culture changes constantly and occurs uniquely in place and time. It forms currents and eddies, and represents a complex of mutually-interdependent perspectives and values that influence society and its institutions in various ways. For example, certain currents of pop culture may originate from, (or diverge into) a subculture, representing perspectives with which the mainstream popular culture has only limited familiarity. Items of popular culture most typically appeal to a broad spectrum of the public.

Institutional propagation

Popular culture and the mass media have a symbiotic relationship: each depends on the other in an intimate collaboration."

—K. Turner (1984), p.4

The news media mines the work of scientists and scholars and conveys it to the general public, often emphasizing "factoids" that have inherent appeal or the power to amaze. For instance, giant pandas (a species in remote Chinese woodlands) have become well-known items of popular culture; parasitic worms, though of greater practical importance, have not. Both scholarly facts and news stories get modified through popular transmission, often to the point of outright falsehoods.

Hannah Arendt's 1961 essay 'The Crisis in Culture' suggested that a "market-driven media would lead to the displacement of culture by the dictates of entertainment." Susan Sontag argues that in our culture, the most "...intelligible, persuasive values are [increasingly] drawn from the entertainment industries", which is "undermining of standards of seriousness." As a result, "tepid, the glib, and the senselessly cruel" topics are becoming the norm. Some critics argue that popular culture is “dumbing down”: "...newspapers that once ran foreign news now feature celebrity gossip, pictures of scantily dressed young ladies...television has replaced high-quality drama with gardening, cookery, and other “lifestyle” programmes...[and] reality TV and asinine soaps," to the point that people are constantly immersed in trivia about celebrity culture.

In Rosenberg and White's book Mass Culture, MacDonald argues that " Popular culture is a debased, trivial culture that voids both the deep realities (sex, death, failure, tragedy) and also the simple spontaneous pleasures. . . . The masses, debauched by several generations of this sort of thing, in turn come to demand trivial and comfortable cultural products." Van den Haag argues that "...all mass media in the end alienate people from personal experience and though appearing to offset it, intensify their moral isolation from each other, from reality and from themselves." He argues that mass media then lessens "...people's capacity to experience life itself." Critics have lamented the ".. replacement of high art and authentic folk culture by tasteless industrialised artefacts produced on a mass scale in order to satisfy the lowest common denominator." This "mass culture emerged after the Second World War and have led to the concentration of mass-culture power in ever larger global media conglomerates." The popular press decreased the amount of news or information that and replaced it with entertainment or titilation that reinforces "... fears, prejudice, scapegoating processes, paranoia, and aggression."

Critics of television and film have argued that the quality of TV output has been diluted as stations relentlessly pursue "populism and ratings" by focusing on the "glitzy, the superficial, and the popular." In film, "Hollywood culture and values" are increasingly dominating film production in other countries. Hollywood films have changed from focusing on scriptwriting and dialogue to creating formulaic films which emphasize "...shock-value and superficial thrill[s]" and special effects, with themes that focus on the "...basic instincts of aggression, revenge, violence, [and] greed." The plots "...often seem simplistic, a standardised template taken from the shelf, and dialogue is minimal." The "characters are shallow and unconvincing, the dialogue is also simple, unreal, and badly constructed."

Folklore

Folklore provides a second and very different source of popular culture. In pre-industrial times, mass culture equaled folk culture. This earlier layer of culture still persists today, sometimes in the form of jokes or slang, which spread through the population by word of mouth and via the Internet. By providing a new channel for transmission, cyberspace has renewed the strength of this element of popular culture.

Although the folkloric element of popular culture engages heavily with the commercial element, the public has its own tastes and it may not embrace every cultural item sold. Moreover, beliefs and opinions about the products of commercial culture (for example: "My favorite character is SpongeBob SquarePants") spread by word-of-mouth, and become modified in the process in the same manner that folklore evolves.

Cultural and subcultural influences on consumer behavior

How do Culture and Subculture Affect Consumer Behavior?

How does culture affect the needs we recognize, how we search, our evaluation of alternatives, our shopping habits, consumption habits, how we dispose of products?

Parts of Culture

Culture: norms, roles, beliefs, values, customs, rituals, artifacts Culture classifies things into discontinuous units of value in society Codes classified units, develops behaviors, specifies priorities, legitimizes and justifies the classifications Consumer socialization - the process by which people develop their values, motivations, and habitual activity Culture creates meanings for everyday products We study how the use and/or collections of products and their meanings move through a society

Nature of Culture—Components

Norms: rules that designate forms of acceptable and unacceptable behavior
Customs: behaviors that lasted over time and passed down in the family setting
Mores: moral standards of behavior
Conventions: practices tied to the conduct of everyday life in various settings
Ethnocentrism: the tendency to view one’s own culture as better or superior to others

Key Points about Culture

It is learned: transmitted from generation to generation
It rewards acceptable behaviors
It stays the same, yet can change
Family, Religion, School and Peers: what is the relative influence of each?
Values Transfusion Model shows how these combine
Will any become more, less relevant?
Consumer socialization: the acquisition of consumption-related cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors.

What is similar about . . .

Marriage
Birth
Death
Shelter
Food
Age grading
Division of labour
Property rights
Family / kinship groups
Status differences
Magic / luck superstitions
Hospitality
Greetings
Joking
Cooking
Personal names
Language
Gestures
Body adornment
Courtship
Music and dance
Incest taboos
Cleanliness training

These are called “cultural universals”

One of the largest surveys of cultural life was undertaken by the Functionalist sociologist George Peter Murdock ("The Common Denominator of Culture", 1945)

He claimed to have identified approximately 70 cultural features that could be considered universal in human societies.

Cultural Generalizations

• Culture is pervasive
• It’s in most every corner of people’s lives
• High-context style—it is where the communication has most of the information in either the physical way it’s presented or the person receiving it already knows the meaning
• Low-context style—the knowledge of the ins and outs of the society is not as widespread
• Culture is functional

The “Languages” of Culture

Colors
Color choice that signifies death varies across regions of the world
The color red
Bright colors
Colors and fashion

Time
Self-time, interaction time, institutional time

• Time styles:
• Approaches: economic, socio-cultural, psychological, measurement, physiological
• Orientation: a person’s perception of the importance of the past, present, or future
• Activity level: monochronic versus polychronic behavior – see PAI
• Time processing: economic or linear, procedural, circular or cyclical

Other “Languages” of Culture

Space
What is the acceptable personal space across cultures?
Distance
Gestures, postures, or body positions
Symbols—signifiers
Friendship and agreements
Government and Laws

Popular Culture and People's Culture

IFolk culture is certainly different from popular culture. In folk culture, sorrows and pleasures as well as contradictions in people's lives manifest themselves in collective but spontaneous forms. This is utilised by the producers of people's culture as a raw material, but only as a raw material, because it contains people's aspirations merely in rudimentary form; these aspirations do carry influences of ruling class ideology, people's own backward thinking and traditions. Therefore, people's culture can only be produced by way of transgressing the folk culture.

Creations of popular culture, on the other hand, are not collective products like folk culture, they are produced individually. As they are produced on a mass scale to attract people without raising their level of thinking, they not only carry strong influences of the contemporarily dominant mode of thinking but also reinforce it. Studies of Hindi detective novels, TV serials and popular films corroborate this fact. These things sell ruling class nationalism, feudal myths of masculine chivalry; sometimes backing the state and at other times opposing it from a fascistic standpoint.

Moreover, one thing must be kept in mind while dealing with the question of contrast between popular and classical forms of culture. Whereas popular culture reflects as well as strengthens the apparent setting of the reality, classical culture does contain an element of opposing it. Therefore, many a time people's resentment is also reflected in the latter. In this there lies a similarity in classical culture and people's culture, that both come up with the desire for change in the status-quo, although their orientation may be different. So the creators of people's culture should learn from classical form on the one hand and folk form on the other.

Creating Brand Personality For Success

Today marketers spend a huge amount of money in creating brand personality in order to build a strong brand in the market. In the competitive scenario, brand personalities enable the consumers to differentiate between brands. Hence, every form of appearance of brand influences the customer to attribute to the brand personality. Celebrity endorsements, presentation of advertisements, messages etc., encourage the customer’s awareness of the brand and help him in judging the value of the brand personality. Brand personality plays a very important role in the process of decision making and influences the customers to buy the product. It gives a competitive edge to the brand and enables the brand to establish an identity of its own in the marketplace. Researchers argue that competitors can match the price, product features and functional aspects of a product but they cannot match its brand personality. This is how the brand personality becomes the competitive advantage for the marketer. Brand personality can be created in direct and indirect ways. The direct way of creating brand personality is by matching the set of human characteristics associated with a typical brand-user with the help of 1) Celebrity endorsements 2) CEO of the company and 3) Employees. The indirect way of creating brand personality is through product related attributes, that include the brand name, visual communications of the brand like logos and symbols, communication, style, price, place and promotions.

MEDIA AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY

From an ontological to an empirical understanding of construction. It has very quickly become textbook wisdom: “media construct reality.” But what does that mean? Did they always do that? Or are they doing it more and more? Or even both of those? Which level are we talking about? Does reality construction mean a factual statement within a theory of knowledge? Or a conscious strategy? Is it simply that we (journalists as well as percipients) cannot not construct or can one decide for or against the construction of reality?

The discussion about “reality construction” has become, in the meantime, inflated 2 – and not only throughout the entire arts, social and cultural sciences but also in disciplines such as mathematics, biology, physics or architecture. It appears as if it is a central discovery of postmodern science that more or less ‘everything’ is constructed – space and time as well as xenophobia; sex and gender as much as the reality of mass media.”

One can only understand the fascination of the catchword “reality construction” when one realises which thoughts are meant to be replaced by it in the first place: reality so-called. By and large it concerns a new version of the discourse in Western philosophy which has been going on for the last two thousand years as to whether the world ‘out there’ really is ‘there’ or is only constructed by us. In the history of philosophy there are many ‘isms’ which are connected with this discussion: essentialism and nominalism, materialism and idealism, and of course recently, realism and constructivism. In all of these schools of though the concern is with the basic question whether an agent or unit X (this can be a person, an observer, a brain, a social system in various forms, the entire culture, the whole society, the media as a whole etc.) that believes that it knows reality has created it or only depicted it. Realism starts from the position that it is more likely that it is reality or it is only reality which has an effect on the agent (and not the reverse); while constructivism asserts that it is more likely or only the agent that, in the act of perceiving reality, creates it. As the table shows, various constructors dedicate them selves to various constructivisms: thus for brain researcher Gerhard Roth it appears indisputable that the brain is the ‘mother’ of all reality construction: even the imagination and reflection on (self)consciousness or ‘self’ is a constructive product of the brain, as neural ‘labelling’ as it were.

Other thinkers either focus on primary communication, culture or media as the reality-generating agent while only advanced constructivism in the variation propounded by Seigfried J. Schmidt attempts to observe all agents equally in a ‘closed circuit’.

Most variations of modern constructivism, especially those developed within the German- speaking scientific discourse, consider themselves to be a counterposition to realism (whether in the guise of naïve, moderate or even radical constructivism) which is still the dominating intellectual model in scientific work, to the mimetic way of thinking and speaking or, as the case may be, to the paradigm of reality depiction which—constructivism alleges—is either latently or manifestly advocated by the majority of scientists. Accordingly, the constructivist way of thought reads as the antipode of the realistic field of terminology. And the classic questions between realism and constructivism are thus: Is reality a discovery or an invention? Do media reflect reality (exactly or distortedly) or to they construct it in the first place? Is the world a projection or a design? Do we represent something or are we (and always have been) constructs? Do we depict reality or build it up? One does not have to be an expert in constructivist discourse to understand that the majority of constructivist have become involved in these philosophically crucial questions and have reacted to the realist generalisation—“everything is depiction”—with a constructivist generalisation—“everything is construction”. The majority of constructivists nowadays (unfortunately) propose that the constructive nature of our reality and world is the condition sine qua non of knowing. In other words: Man cannot not construct, one ‘always’ has done that, ‘we’ always come too late and can’t decide for or against construction as a precondition and mode of knowing. I would like to call this form of constructivism—which is to be persistently found in all the above-mentioned variations of constructivist though—ontological constructivism. At first that sounds as if it would be a contradiction in terms because how can constructivism as a theory of the active processes of knowing ever be ontological, that is claim the unalterable existence of a fact? The assertion “everything is construction” becomes caught in the well-known logical dilemma of the infinite regression: if “everything” is construction, then this sentence is also etc. etc. but what knowledge of value does the sentence contain in addition? If I take the constructor of reality out of the constructed reality in order to avoid exactly that contradiction ( as Gerhard Roth does), then I land in another paradoxical ontology again in that the brain is the constructor of reality outside of the constructed reality, that is, it sits ‘out there’ in the real world. But how can we ever know if reality is constructed by the brain? Who has ever seen (and with what) brains in a (non-constructed, real) reality? One might object that an ontological constructivism which regards the constructed nature of the world as an unalterable fact is almost never proposed. A few quotations from the literature will serve as a refutation. Thus Gebhard Rusch, for example, in his critical discussion of my variation of constructivism wrote that one cannot compare realistic procedures and processes with constructivist ones “as if within the framework of a constructivist approach there was an alternative to cognitive-social constructiveness”. If there is no alternative to cognitive-social constructiveness, then at least more (or less) constructiveness? It is not difficult to realise that every attempt at gradual empiricism is repulsed. Often the ‘fact’ of constructiveness is not represented as a result but rather as a pre-condition. The journalism researcher, Alexander Görke, who is oriented on systems theory, writes in an article with the subtitle “On the Reality of Mass Media” with the following as the first sentence: Talk about the functional system of mass media is based on the observation that also mass media and journalism too [...] construct reality sui generis. For theoretical considerations of the system this raises the question of how this specific form of creating social order is possible and that means how the mass media system distinguishes itself from its surroundings.”

Here, too, the observation of the constructiveness precedes theory formation; the assumption of the construction of a different reality by each social system becomes the presupposition of the debate on how systems differentiate themselves from their surroundings. Any further examination of this “reality sui generic” or with the terminology of constructing which is used does not take place.

A third example comes from Siegfried J. Schmidt himself. He writes: “Reality construction of actors are subject-bound but not subjective in the sense of arbitrary, intentional or relativistic. And that is because in the construction of reality individuals [...]are always too late. Everything which becomes conscious first assumes the unattainable neuronal activity of consciousness; everything which is said presumes an already unconsciously acquired mastery of language; how things will be talked about and with what effect. All of this pre-supposes socially regulated and culturally programmed discourses within the social system. In this respect these processes organise the reality construction of themselves and thus create their own ordering of realit(y)ies.”

Once again constructivism appears as an ontological theory offering no alternatives:

Constructiveness was always there, whether one wants it or not. Why is there this notorious disregard of conscious will as an instrument of reality construction? The answer is right in front of our eyes: German language constructivism was always concerned with removing the term ‘construction’ from any connotation of planning—intentional or strategic production — and move it towards an unconscious, unintentional, arbitrary production of reality. In the process it is forgotten that there is no logically compelling reason why constructivism should not observe both. Here the unconscious, non-arbitrary construction of reality (in a neuronal sense and well as in the sense of our pre-existing systems of inherited abilities, socialization and [native] language, that is to say, those constructions which ‘we’ cannot control actively and consciously or if, then only partially) and there the conscious, arbitrary construction (in the sense of a conscious construction of the world as, for example, in tabloid journalism through the power of the imagination, by using certain linguistic techniques and styles of discussion etc.). To recapitulate more precisely and to apply it to the media complex: the statement “media construct reality” can be understood as “media construct reality” per se and always have because it is not possible to do anything else, because the relationship of world and media is, in itself, constructive. This is the position of so-called radical constructivism that, in my critical revision, is really an ontological constructivism. It leads to the old philosophical stalemate between realism and constructivism – and to the well-known

question as to whether the person who has just had a blow delivered to the head is in real or constructive pain. May the philosophers take one position or another and argue it for the next two thousand years as well! Whoever proposes a radical i.e. ontological constructivism on the level of knowledge theory does not, a priori, deny the possibility that there could be another constructivism but in general it is the philosophical all-encompassing generalisation of constructionism itself which is advocated.

The statement “media construct reality” can, however, also be supplemented by: more and more or less and less. This would be a processual or empirical variation of constructivism that would appear substantially more plausible. The objection of the orthodox, ontological constructivists is that an observation like this is logically incompatible with constructivism and leads back to realism. And in point of fact, the statement that “media construct reality more and more, more frequently or more often” more in keeping with realism since construction is more likely to be understood as a conscious strategy. Would the possibility of differentiating between construction (as an ontological pre-condition of knowing) and constructiveness (as an empirical +- trend) offer a way out of the dilemma? Theoretically this would be possible though it is, however, almost impossible to maintain looked at from a pragmatic linguistic standpoint. It appears to me to make more sense not to bind processual or empirical constructivism—as I understand it—epistemologically either on realism or on constructivism but rather on an alternative to both these currents of epistemology: on non- dualistic philosophy, that wants to leave the question of depiction or construction behind it.

One might see a trend to this non-dualistic way of thought in the development of Siegfried J. Schmidt’s constructivism (cf. Schmidt 2002) although Schmidt starting out from non-dualism only to land even more definitively in an (at least remainder of) ontological constructivism. Empirical constructivism is thus concerned with constructiveness as an empirically measurable trend on the basis of a non-dualistic epistemology. But what does that mean? Non-dualism (according to Mitterer 1992 and 2001 as well as its use in Weber’s media theory 1996) reconstructs realism and constructivism as the results of a particular philosophical technique of argumentation, viz a dualistic way of speaking: only when there is a difference between the observer (subject, instance...) and the observed (world, reality) in the first place can the question as to which of the two parts is more ‘weighty’ be asked. Is it the agent that creates the world (= constructivism) – or is it the world that affects the instance (= realism)? Non-dualistic philosophy in the version of the Austrian philosopher Josef Mitterer means in the first place ‘only’ the critical analysis of this discourse in philosophy. Dualism is to be made transparent in to arrive, in a second step, at an epistemological theory which does not depend on differentiating observer and observed (in my terminology; according to Mitterer’s it would be called ‘description’ and ‘object’). Applied to media it means nothing more than not to assume the dualism of media (as a reality generating and/or depicting agent) and reality (as the product and/or precondition for media reporting) without questioning it i.e. to ontologise it. Let us look at the example of the reporting of the terrorism of 11.9. Of course I can assert that the camera pictures per se construct reality and so at this level I can argue an ontological constructivism. At the same time I can also determine that increasing chronological distance to the events meant increasing construction – therefore processual or empirical constructivism! What has to be taken into account simply that both levels (here the epistemological-generalising theory; there the practical-empirical) have to be separated from each other in the discourse, without that leading to entrenched dualism once again. In my view empirical constructivism allows one to break talk about constructivity down to the praxis of current media communication. Constructivity 10 is no longer simply a conflictual term or an empty empirical place-keeper but a concrete trend that might be thought of as embedded in

other macro-trends of increasing media permeation such as the process of transforming

everything into entertainment or fiction, acceleration, commercialisation/economisation

etc. Revealed forgeries such as Kujau’s Hitler diaries, Michael Born’s feature film fakes or Tom Kummer’s invented interviews under the “faction journalism” label are, however, only the tip of the iceberg within the framework of a trend towards more and more constructivity. I am thinking here about the increasingly broad interpenetration of journalism and entertainment (most recently “militainment” is making a name for itself i.e. reality TV in Hollywood guise ‘live’ from the campaign theatre of operations 11) or about the construction of reality in real life soaps. The good old quote from Walter Benjamin seems more pertinent than ever:

“... in the studio the mechanical equipment has penetrated so deeply into reality that its pure aspect freed from the foreign body of the equipment is the result of a special pro cedure, namely, the shooting by the specially adjusted camera and the mounting of the shot together with other similar ones. The equipment-free aspect of reality here has become the height of artifice; the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology.”

As can be seen here with little difficulty, Benjamin is also proposing an empirical constructivism although from the quote itself the epistemological origins from which the observation took place are not clear. The idea that the alleged real reality appearing to us on the screen is as unfiltered and unvarnished as possible and requires the highest degree of mechanical artificiality in order to appear real, still—and repeatedly—seems important to me. The other way round: less, more amateur or low-tech use of media is one of the factors which increases the impression of the images being constructed. 12 – All of these observations, however, are only possible within an empirical understanding of constructivity. Particularly the last-mention reversal (‘the clearer real reality is suggested the more constructivity there is behind it’) offers enormous potential for media criticism and media education. Of course this theory should not be ontologically transformed (in the sense of “in reality there is more constructivity behind it”). But the self-relativisation in a discourse cannot be over- emphasised.

In an era of info-tainment, edu-tainment and also milit-ainment, of real life soaps, docu-

dramas, faction journalism and extreme TV, of gender-swapping and avatars it would appear that an empirical constructivism which considers constructivity as a trend towards more fictionalisation is more necessary than ever. I would like to emphasise once again that I am not suggesting a culturally critical pessimism in the sense of a loss of the reality ‘out there’ or a distancing from one reality and proposing a reality of nasty (post)modern media hybrids. It is much more that the question about the reality, the truth or reality in itself are revealed as philosophical detritus, as systematically misleading and therefore as wrongly framed. At the level of empirical media praxis it concerns the observation of the process and, therefore, the modalities of reality construction which are becoming increasingly more refined, technically advanced and economically motivated. So what is interesting is both the aspect of the reversal of classical reality ascriptions fictionalisation and dramatisation of journalism vs. the increase in virtual ‘reality depiction’ in entertainment, cf. Weber 2001) as well as the tendency to hybridisation which questions dualist differentiations (infotainment as the intersection between information and entertainment, faction journalism as a balancing act between fact and fiction, infomercials as the intersection between journalism and advertising and not forgetting PR journalism in the disguise of journalism). In other words: numerous phenomena in current media communication (from reconstructed scenes in reality TV to PR screeds in daily newspapers – the latter camouflaged under such captions as “reader services”) offer examples for analysis in the light of empirical constructivism. The concluding systematology attempts to give a overview of current as well as classical phenomena, genres and forms in degrees.

Current modalities of reality construction in the (primarily audiovisual) mass media –

distinguished by reference to reality (proximity to reality decreases from 1 to 8)

1. Reality TV / Realtime TV / Eyewitness News (real deployment of firemen, ambulance, police etc. with accompanying camera, with live broadcasting when possible).

2. Classical information journalism ( world events with only a short time lapse, usually almost no reconstructed scenes as well as almost no direct media intervention in events) [this too is becoming increasingly doubtful!]

3. ‘Narrative Reality Television’ ( ‘real’ events are reconstructed as in “Aktenzeichen XY”, “Emergency” etc. programmes.

4. Entertainment and tabloid journalism (increase in media staged and constructed stories as well as an increase in conscious media agenda-setting)

5. PR journalism (conscious and intentional image and brand bias of the reporting, increasing lack of labelling)

6. ‘Performative Reality Television’ (‘’ actors in the context of staged action and thus within the paradigm ‘game’. Examples: “Big Brother”, “Taxi Orange”, “Outback” etc.

7. Faction Journalism, Journalistic (feature)film fakes, inter alia, escalation of the constructive principle in journalism. (Michael Born, Tom Kummer etc.)

8. Classical Entertainment formats (Daily soaps, feature films etc.) and Advertising.

I want to mention once again the media influence of supposedly ‘real reality’ can definitely be observed constructively. In this area there are already tendencies to be seen in conscious constructivism – such as when police, firemen etc. or journalists orient themselves on the camera teams and intentionally exaggerate events. 14 Finally, a general assumption of constructivism – understood as a situational, critical reading methodology that is always aware of the media observer – is appropriate at this stage. But constructivism, as enunciated above, should not limit itself to generalising. Apart from that, it is worth noting that the proposed gradual continuum of reality construction unifies journalistic and entertainment forms of representation. This was unusual in communication sciences up till now. Empirical work that started from the proposed system would be able to prove that with its help a better understanding of current media-generated reality construction would be possible.

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of using language as a means to persuade. Along with logic and dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. From ancient Greece to the late 19th Century, it was a central part of Western education, filling the need to train public speakers and writers to move audiences to action with arguments. [1] The very act of defining has itself been a central part of rhetoric, appearing among Aristotle's Topics.[2] The word is derived from the Greek ῥητορικός (rhētorikós), "oratorical",[3] from ῥήτωρ (rhḗtōr), "public speaker",[4] related to ῥῆμα (rhêma), "that which is said or spoken, word, saying",[5] and ultimately derived from the verb ἐρῶ (erô), "to speak, say".[6] In its broadest sense, rhetoric concerns human discourse.[7][8]

Visual rhetoric

Visual rhetoric is the fairly recent development of a theoretical framework describing how visual images communicate, as opposed to aural or verbal messages. The study of visual rhetoric is different from that of visual or graphic design, in that it emphasizes images as rational expressions of cultural meaning, as opposed to mere aesthetic consideration (Kress and van Leeuwen 18).
Visual rhetoric examines also the relationship between images and writing. Some examples of artifacts analyzed by visual rhetoricians are charts, paintings, sculpture, diagrams, web pages, advertisements, movies, architecture, newspapers, photographs, etc.
As shown in the works of the Groupe µ, visual rhetoric is closely related to the older study of semiotics. Semiotic theory seeks to describe the rhetorical significance of sign-making. Visual rhetoric is a broader study, covering all the visual ways humans try to communicate, outside academic policing (Kress 11).
Visual tropes and tropic thinking are a part of visual rhetoric (the art of visual persuasion and visual communication using visual images). The study includes, but is not limited to, the various ways in which it can be applied throughout visual art history.
The term "visual rhetoric" has emerged mainly as a way of marking out disciplinary territory for scholars interested in non-textual artifacts such as those mentioned above; conceptually, the term "visual rhetoric" is itself somewhat problematic. It is usually used to denote non-textual artifacts, yet any mark on a surface -- including text -- can be seen as "visual." Consider the texts available at Project Gutenberg. These "plain vanilla" texts, lacking any visual connection to their original, published forms, nevertheless suggest important questions about visual rhetoric. Their bare-bones manner of presentation implies, for example, that the "words themselves" are more important than the visual forms in which the words were originally presented. Given that such texts can easily be read by a speech synthesizer, they also suggest important questions about the relationship between writing and speech, or orality and literacy.
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood.
One of the attempts to formalize the field was most notably led by the Vienna Circle and presented in their International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, in which the authors agreed on breaking out the field, which they called "semiotic", into three branches:

* Semantics: Relation between signs and the things they refer to, their denotation.
* Syntactics: Relation of signs to each other in formal structures.
* Pragmatics: Relation of signs to their impacts on those who use them. (Also known as General Semantics)
These branches are clearly inspired by Charles W. Morris, especially his Writings on the general theory of signs (The Hague, The Netherlands, Mouton, 1971, orig. 1938).
Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological dimensions, for example Umberto Eco proposes that every cultural phenomenon can be studied as communication. However, some semioticians focus on the logical dimensions of the science. They examine areas belonging also to the natural sciences - such as how organisms make predictions about, and adapt to, their semiotic niche in the world (see semiosis). In general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study: the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics or zoosemiosis.
Syntactics is the branch of semiotics that deals with the formal properties of signs and symbols. More precisely, syntactics deals with the "rules that govern how words are combined to form phrases and sentences.". Charles Morris adds that semantics deals with the relation of signs to their designata and the objects which they may or do denote; and, pragmatics deals with the biotic aspects of semiosis, that is, with all the psychological, biological, and sociological phenomena which occur in the functioning of signs.

Media as a Consciousness Industry

The Consciousness Industry is a term coined by author and theorist Hans Magnus Enzensberger, which identifies the mechanisms through which the human mind is reproduced as a social product. Foremost among these mechanisms are the institutions of mass media and education. According to Enzensberger, the mind industry does not produce anything specific; rather, its main business is to perpetuate the existing order of man's domination over man.

Hans Haacke elaborates on the consciousness industry as it applies to the arts in a wider system of production, distribution, and consumption. Haacke specifically implicates museums as manufacturers of aesthetic perception that fail to acknowledge their intellectual, political, and moral authority: "rather than sponsoring intelligent, critical awareness, museums thus tend to foster appeasement.