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Cultural Studies
Stuart Hall

MASS COMMUNICATION: MEDIA AND CULTURE

Chapter 27
 Semiotics
Media Effects 
Chapter 27
 Semiotics
Media Effects 

Chapter Outline 10th Edition

  1. Introduction - Critical theorists such as Stuart Hall question the narrow, quantitative, and scientific focus of mainstream communication research on media influence.
  2. Cultural studies versus media studies: An ideological difference.
    1. Hall believed that the media function to maintain the dominance of the powerful and to exploit the poor and powerless.
    2. Ideology is defined as “the mental frameworks – the languages, the concepts, categories, imagery of thought, and the representation – which different classes and social groups deploy in order to make sense of, define, figure out and render intelligible the way society works.”
    3. Most of us are unaware of our ideologies and the tremendous impact they can have on our lives.
    4. Mainstream U.S. mass communication research serves the myth of democratic pluralism and ignores the power struggle that the media mask.
    5. To avoid academic compartmentalization, Hall preferred the term cultural studies to media studies.
    6. Articulate means both speaking out against oppression and linking that subjugation with the communication media.
    7. Since one of Hall’s stated aims was to unmask the power imbalances within society, he said the cultural studies approach is valid if it “deconstructs” the current structure of a media research establishment that fails to deal with ideology.
    8. Cultural studies is closely related to critical theory, but places more emphasis on resistance than rationality.
    9. Hall believed the purpose of theory and research is to empower people who are marginalized in order to change the world.
  3. Hegemony: Marxism without guarantees.
    1. Hall is strongly influenced by Marxist thought, though he sees the hard line of economic determinism as an oversimplification.
    2. Hall uses the term hegemony to refer to already accepted interpretations of reality that keep society’s haves in power over its have-nots.
    3. He emphasizes that media hegemony is not a conscious plot, it’s not overtly coercive, and its effects are not total.
    4. The result is that the role of mass media turns out to be production of consent rather than a reflection of consensus that already exists.
    5. Hall believed that the consent-making function of the mass media is to convince readers and viewers that they share the same interests as those who hold the reins of power.
  4. Making meaning through discourse.
    1. Hall contended that the primary function of discourse is to make meaning.
      1. Words and signs have no intrinsic meaning.
      2. We learn what signs mean through discourse—through frameworks of interpretation.
    2. Hall believed we must examine the sources of discourse.
      1. People with power create “discursive formations” that become naturalized.
      2. Those ways of interpreting the world are perpetuated through further discourse and keep the dominant in power.
  5. Corporate control of mass communication.
    1. Hall believed the focus of the study of communication should be on how human culture influences the media and on power relations and social structures.
    2. For Hall, stripping the study of communication away from the cultural context in which it is found and ignoring the realities of unequal power distribution in society weakened our field and made it less theoretically relevant.
    3. Hall and other advocates of cultural studies believe that media representations of culture reproduce social inequalities and keep the average person powerless.
    4. At least in the U.S., corporations produce and distribute the vast majority of information we receive.
    5. Corporate control of information prevents many stories from being told.
    6. The ultimate issue for cultural studies is not what information is presented, but whose information it is.
  6. Cultural factors that affect the selection of news
    1. Hall saw corporate clout as only one reason broadcast and print journalism support the status quo.
    2. Over an eight year period, Herbert Gans of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism conducted a content analysis of newscasts at CBS and NBC along with the coverage of two news magazines—Newsweek and Time.
    3. He discovered multiple values, procedures, and publishing realities that ensure their stories favor people who already have power, fame, and fortune. Those factors include, source of news, individualism, ethnocentrism, the democratic process, and objectivity.
      1. Sources of news: The bulk of broadcast and print news comes from those who already have power.
      2. Individualism: Americans value individual effort and news stories are usually framed around a single person who is powerful, wealthy, and has a vested interest in the status quo.
      3. Ethnocentrism: Like reporters in other nations, U.S. journalists value their own country over others. They don’t want the United States to look bad.
      4. Democratic processes: Reporters are committed to democracy, so they frame every election in terms of a simplistic “who won or lost?” dichotomy rather than the complexity of the issues.
      5. Objectivity: Most journalists have a strong commitment to report the news without bias—objective reporting of facts without taking sides. This gives the impression that every position is equally valid.
  7. Extreme Makeover: The ideological work of reality TV.
    1. Luke Winslow claims that ordinary people are offered more explicit guidelines for living in reality TV than other genres or formats.
    2. On Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, episodes chronicle the transformation of a deserving family’s desperate living quarters.
    3. Each episode is a mini morality play that suggests wealth goes only to those who deserve it.
    4. Although many intellectuals dismiss the study of popular culture as frivolous, Hall sees it as a key site where the struggle for power between the haves and the have-nots takes place
  8. An obstinate audience.
    1. Audiences may not accept the source’s ideology.
    2. There are three ways to decode a message.
      1. Operate inside the dominant code.
      2. Apply a negotiable code.
      3. Substitute an oppositional code.
    3. Although Hall had trouble believing the powerless can change the system, he respects the ability of people to resist the dominant code.
    4. He is unable to predict, though, when and where resistance will spring up.
    5. James Anderson (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and Amie Kincaid (University of Illinois, Springfield) point out the paradox of satire that is used by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on their television shows.
    6. Their very exposure and reiteration of the dominant ideology may make it more acceptable.
    7. Without naming a viable alternative, the dominant ideology will have no rival and seem to be natural.
  9.  Ethical reflection: Larry Frey’s communication activism for social justice.
    1. Social justice activism is based on an identification and solidarity with oppressed, marginalized, and under-resourced communities.
    2. Larry Frey, professor of communication at the University of Colorado, says action to address these wrongs starts with a social justice sensibility—the ethical conviction that “none of us is truly free while others of us are oppressed.”
    3. But according to Frey, most current cultural studies scholars have turned to merely gazing with interest at cultural phenomena. They ignore any attempt to intervene in a meaningful way to aid those trapped in the cultural systems that Hall described.
    4. The ethical mandate of communication activism for social justice insists we act to change structural conditions and attempt to make the world more just.
    5. Frey and Mara Adelman used their communication skills at the Bonaventure House, a residential home for people with AIDS.
  10. Critique: Your judgment will depend on your ideology.
    1. Perhaps more than any other theorist covered in this book, Hall sought to change the world.
    2. Cultural studies involves learning what the “other” is like.
    3. Hall was critical of scholars who didn’t realize—or didn’t reveal—their value commitments.
      1. Many communications scholars question the wisdom of performing scholarship under an ideological banner.
      2. To some, the strong ideological component inherent in cultural studies limits its credibility.
    4. The book Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law & Order is Hall’s best known qualitative research.
    5. Students’ first reading of a typical Stuart Hall monograph may find it daunting, both in clarity and in style.
    6. Hall enjoys widespread community of agreement for his pioneering work.

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TEXT COMPARE

Archived chapters (PDF)
from previous editions
are available in
Resources by Type.
See list

New to Theory
Resources?
Find out more in this short
video overview (3:01).


Cultural Studies
Stuart Hall

MASS COMMUNICATION: MEDIA AND CULTURE

Chapter 27
 Semiotics
Media Effects 
Chapter 27
 Semiotics
Media Effects 

Chapter Outline 10th Edition

  1. Introduction - Critical theorists such as Stuart Hall question the narrow, quantitative, and scientific focus of mainstream communication research on media influence.
  2. Cultural studies versus media studies: An ideological difference.
    1. Hall believed that the media function to maintain the dominance of the powerful and to exploit the poor and powerless.
    2. Ideology is defined as “the mental frameworks – the languages, the concepts, categories, imagery of thought, and the representation – which different classes and social groups deploy in order to make sense of, define, figure out and render intelligible the way society works.”
    3. Most of us are unaware of our ideologies and the tremendous impact they can have on our lives.
    4. Mainstream U.S. mass communication research serves the myth of democratic pluralism and ignores the power struggle that the media mask.
    5. To avoid academic compartmentalization, Hall preferred the term cultural studies to media studies.
    6. Articulate means both speaking out against oppression and linking that subjugation with the communication media.
    7. Since one of Hall’s stated aims was to unmask the power imbalances within society, he said the cultural studies approach is valid if it “deconstructs” the current structure of a media research establishment that fails to deal with ideology.
    8. Cultural studies is closely related to critical theory, but places more emphasis on resistance than rationality.
    9. Hall believed the purpose of theory and research is to empower people who are marginalized in order to change the world.
  3. Hegemony: Marxism without guarantees.
    1. Hall is strongly influenced by Marxist thought, though he sees the hard line of economic determinism as an oversimplification.
    2. Hall uses the term hegemony to refer to already accepted interpretations of reality that keep society’s haves in power over its have-nots.
    3. He emphasizes that media hegemony is not a conscious plot, it’s not overtly coercive, and its effects are not total.
    4. The result is that the role of mass media turns out to be production of consent rather than a reflection of consensus that already exists.
    5. Hall believed that the consent-making function of the mass media is to convince readers and viewers that they share the same interests as those who hold the reins of power.
  4. Making meaning through discourse.
    1. Hall contended that the primary function of discourse is to make meaning.
      1. Words and signs have no intrinsic meaning.
      2. We learn what signs mean through discourse—through frameworks of interpretation.
    2. Hall believed we must examine the sources of discourse.
      1. People with power create “discursive formations” that become naturalized.
      2. Those ways of interpreting the world are perpetuated through further discourse and keep the dominant in power.
  5. Corporate control of mass communication.
    1. Hall believed the focus of the study of communication should be on how human culture influences the media and on power relations and social structures.
    2. For Hall, stripping the study of communication away from the cultural context in which it is found and ignoring the realities of unequal power distribution in society weakened our field and made it less theoretically relevant.
    3. Hall and other advocates of cultural studies believe that media representations of culture reproduce social inequalities and keep the average person powerless.
    4. At least in the U.S., corporations produce and distribute the vast majority of information we receive.
    5. Corporate control of information prevents many stories from being told.
    6. The ultimate issue for cultural studies is not what information is presented, but whose information it is.
  6. Cultural factors that affect the selection of news
    1. Hall saw corporate clout as only one reason broadcast and print journalism support the status quo.
    2. Over an eight year period, Herbert Gans of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism conducted a content analysis of newscasts at CBS and NBC along with the coverage of two news magazines—Newsweek and Time.
    3. He discovered multiple values, procedures, and publishing realities that ensure their stories favor people who already have power, fame, and fortune. Those factors include, source of news, individualism, ethnocentrism, the democratic process, and objectivity.
      1. Sources of news: The bulk of broadcast and print news comes from those who already have power.
      2. Individualism: Americans value individual effort and news stories are usually framed around a single person who is powerful, wealthy, and has a vested interest in the status quo.
      3. Ethnocentrism: Like reporters in other nations, U.S. journalists value their own country over others. They don’t want the United States to look bad.
      4. Democratic processes: Reporters are committed to democracy, so they frame every election in terms of a simplistic “who won or lost?” dichotomy rather than the complexity of the issues.
      5. Objectivity: Most journalists have a strong commitment to report the news without bias—objective reporting of facts without taking sides. This gives the impression that every position is equally valid.
  7. Extreme Makeover: The ideological work of reality TV.
    1. Luke Winslow claims that ordinary people are offered more explicit guidelines for living in reality TV than other genres or formats.
    2. On Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, episodes chronicle the transformation of a deserving family’s desperate living quarters.
    3. Each episode is a mini morality play that suggests wealth goes only to those who deserve it.
    4. Although many intellectuals dismiss the study of popular culture as frivolous, Hall sees it as a key site where the struggle for power between the haves and the have-nots takes place
  8. An obstinate audience.
    1. Audiences may not accept the source’s ideology.
    2. There are three ways to decode a message.
      1. Operate inside the dominant code.
      2. Apply a negotiable code.
      3. Substitute an oppositional code.
    3. Although Hall had trouble believing the powerless can change the system, he respects the ability of people to resist the dominant code.
    4. He is unable to predict, though, when and where resistance will spring up.
    5. James Anderson (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and Amie Kincaid (University of Illinois, Springfield) point out the paradox of satire that is used by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on their television shows.
    6. Their very exposure and reiteration of the dominant ideology may make it more acceptable.
    7. Without naming a viable alternative, the dominant ideology will have no rival and seem to be natural.
  9.  Ethical reflection: Larry Frey’s communication activism for social justice.
    1. Social justice activism is based on an identification and solidarity with oppressed, marginalized, and under-resourced communities.
    2. Larry Frey, professor of communication at the University of Colorado, says action to address these wrongs starts with a social justice sensibility—the ethical conviction that “none of us is truly free while others of us are oppressed.”
    3. But according to Frey, most current cultural studies scholars have turned to merely gazing with interest at cultural phenomena. They ignore any attempt to intervene in a meaningful way to aid those trapped in the cultural systems that Hall described.
    4. The ethical mandate of communication activism for social justice insists we act to change structural conditions and attempt to make the world more just.
    5. Frey and Mara Adelman used their communication skills at the Bonaventure House, a residential home for people with AIDS.
  10. Critique: Your judgment will depend on your ideology.
    1. Perhaps more than any other theorist covered in this book, Hall sought to change the world.
    2. Cultural studies involves learning what the “other” is like.
    3. Hall was critical of scholars who didn’t realize—or didn’t reveal—their value commitments.
      1. Many communications scholars question the wisdom of performing scholarship under an ideological banner.
      2. To some, the strong ideological component inherent in cultural studies limits its credibility.
    4. The book Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law & Order is Hall’s best known qualitative research.
    5. Students’ first reading of a typical Stuart Hall monograph may find it daunting, both in clarity and in style.
    6. Hall enjoys widespread community of agreement for his pioneering work.

 
 
 
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