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Summary all lectures media, society and politics (1 tm 12)
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This document contains notes from all the lectures of media, society and politics. In total there are 12 lectures
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Summary Media, society, and politics 2022
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Samenvatting Making Sense of Media and Politics, ISBN: 9781000550634 Media Society and Politics (S_P4SMA)
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Samenvatting Making Sense of Media and Politics, ISBN: 9781000550634 Media Maatschappij en Politiek (S_DPQM)
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All Lectures Media Society and PoliticsLecture 1 - Media, Society and Politics
5 principles of Wolfsfeld
- Three perspectives:
1. ‘Political power can usually be translated into…
2. ‘When authorities lose control over the political environment they also lose
control over the news’.
3. ‘There is no such a thing’
- Three dimensions: politicians, media and public.
- They interact
Wolfsfeld
- ‘Politics is above all a contest (p. 1)
- Contest about media coverage.
- Crucial that the public support the policies to have legitimacy.
- Media provides the audience.
- ‘The nature of what we call the ‘media’ may have changed considerably after
the creation of the Internet, but the need to be heard remains a central part of
the political game’.
- The traditional, mainstream media still dominates.
- ‘If you don’t exist in the media you don’t exist politically’.
- Become known
- Mobilize supporters
- Influence public opinion
- Influence policy
5 Principles in political communication (Wolfsfeld):
1. ‘Political power can usually be translated into power over all forms of media’.
2. ‘When the powerful lose control over the political environment, they also lose control
over all forms of media’.
3. There is no objective journalism, there is pluralist journalism: ‘Every political story
that appears in every form of media is biased.
4. ‘All forms of media are dedicated more than anything else to telling good stories and
this can often have a major impact on the political processes’.
- Stories have to be engaging. News is made/constructed in a specific way
5. ‘Many of the most important effects of the various forms of media on citizens tend to
be unintentional and unnoticed.
- What you read between 12 and 18 forms you and these are small unnoticed
things.
Interdependence (mutual dependency) between media and politicians
- Competitive symbiosis: The relationship between political antagonists/actors and the
news media can be described as a ‘competitive symbiosis’ (Wolfsfeld) in which each
side of the relationship attempts to exploit the other while expending a minimum
, amount of cost. Each side has assets needed by the other to succeed in its
respective role.
- Publicity versus info.
- Media is also economic activity (minimize amount of money maximum amount of
content)
- Power holders produce constant news and are easy in that way.
How much control and power does the media actually have?
- Political power = media power.
- ‘Front door’: the powerful are always relevant and thus get more/automatic
media access and positive media coverage.
- Parties dominate the news (bias towards the powerful/power bias)
- The more powerful get covered more often and more positively
(Wolfsfeld, p.12).
- Elites also get more positive coverage.
- Obsession with elites limits the range of political discourse.
- ‘Back door’: ‘powerless’ have to work hard/make themselves
relevant/interesting to get into the media.
- In that sense journalist don’t have an fully open choice
- Politicians have to be able to communicate
Civil disobedience (sidedoor):
- Powerless have to do something
- Always short lived
- Constantly thinking of something new
State vs private (commercial) media
- Blurry: private media receive money from the government
- Almost no state media anymore
- State media biased towards incumbents.
- The more authoritarian you get, the more you can control the media (Putin)
- The media is powerful but sometimes the politicians are more powerful
- Inequalities in society are reflected in the news (makes it structural)
Noam Chomsky (and Herman)
- Mainly an American story about the political economy of mass media.
- Edward Herman: developed the ‘propaganda model’ of criticism arguing that ‘market
forces, internalized assumptions and self-censorship’ motivate newspapers and
television networks to stifle dissent.
- Commercial companies are dependent on other commercial companies
- Because if kapitalism there cannot be a good sense of journalism
- Article gives criticism of this.
- They describe US media as businesses that sell a product.
- The media sells the attention of the audience to other businesses
- They say the media is the fourth pillar of democracy (Naive liberal model).
,Media as ‘democratic watchdog’ (Bennett & Serrin):
- Media takes initiative.
- Investigative reporting.
- Independent scrutiny.
- Documenting, questioning, and investigating.
- Provide public and officials with timely information
- As journalist you have to be the watchdog
- You need to be well informed
- Hold powerholders accountable
- A well functioning media is of paramount importance for democratic societies:
- Report events objectively as they occur, to allow citizens to make informed
political choices.
- Control power-holders and unearth abuses of power through investigative
journalism.
Chomsky and Herman:
- US media fails to perform democratic tasks and are basically akin to propaganda
systems in totalitarian states.
- ‘It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the
media are private and formal censorship is absent. This is especially true
when the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate
and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as
spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest’ (p. 1).
- 5 filters where media has to go through in the US which makes it a
propaganda machine.
- There is censorship: if you speak against the elite, you will not be broadcast
- They consider that the media is often involved in misinformation and argue that the
media has ‘extended’ the Cold War. Chomsky even contends that the media is in
essence against democracy.
- ‘Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to the totalitarian state’.
- ‘Unlike totalitarian systems, where physical force can be readily used to
coerce the general population, democratic societies like the US can only
make use of non-violent means of control’.
Foucault:
- ‘Power is everywhere’: diffused and embodied in discourse, knowledge and ‘regimes
of truth’. Norms are embedded beyond our perception - causing us to discipline
ourselves without any willful coercion from others.
- Panopticism: the systematic ordering and controlling of human populations through
subtle and often unseen forces (surveillance techniques).
- Non violent forms of control
, Power
- The intentional production of causal effect: the ability to let people think or do things
they don’t want to think or do.
- Power is the ability to achieve one’s goals or objectives.
- Power is (also) the ability to overcome opposition, to exercise control over people.
- Always hierarchical, in every situation (Heywood).
- No relationships are horizontal.
- The principle and the subaltern: power relations are hierarchical/asymmetric
relations between a superior (principle) and a subordinate (subaltern).
- In power relations there is intentional action of a superior.
- The subordinate always has some room to maneuver, some freedom and
choice to resist.
4 forms of power (what intentional effect can the media generate)
1. Limiting the options of the subaltern (the media cannot do that physically
- Limiting people on emotional of physical base but also hurting someone
psychologically
- Physical coercion based on negative bodily and emotional sanctions.
- Violent actions directed against the body or mind of the subaltern (e.g. torture,
beating and physical threat).
- The principal reduces the options of the subaltern to practically zero.
- Non-violent directed at limiting the freedom of the subaltern (e.g. humiliation).
2. Limiting your actions by setting the agenda (reduce the way you can choose things)
- Manipulation and propaganda, let people think of a limited amount of options.
- The principal changes the bases on which the subaltern perceives the rational
bases of action without the subaltern noticing it.
- Subaltern chooses on ‘rational’ grounds what the principal wants (e.g.
propaganda, advertising and political campaigns).
3. Changing the meaning of symbols so your argumentation gets limited.
- Signification and cognitive symbolism.
- Power relations are articulations of meaning (a particular logic of the
signification …)
- You cannot change power if you stay in their system
- Words matter
- Framing, changing the whole idea about what words mean.
4. Thought control is a long term element.
- Dominant ideology: value shaping.
- Ideological hegemony is a situation where a particular ideology is pervasively
reflected throughout a society in all principal social institutions and permeates
dominant cultural ideas and most social relationships.
- Herman and Chomsky: (private as well as public) US media function
as a mechanism of propaganda through ‘five filters’.
- Most news that are being broadcast have been filtered to express the
dominant ideology and interests.
- Through the media there is power shaping ideology of hegemony
- Not what is mainstream in society but what is most often
published/broadcasts
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