Cultural Studies

Cultural Studies

A cultural study is an academic work that is studied within the arts, social sciences, the humanities and science and technology (Sardar and Loon, 2005). There are numerous way culture is seen, and one of them is seen to be a type of a social behavior. According to Wendy Grisworld (1994), when sociologists talks about culture it usually means four things, which consists of norms, values, beliefs or expressive symbols. Norms is define as a way a person behaves in a particular society, values on the other hand is what the people is a belief that they think is valuable to them, beliefs is how they think the world operates, and lastly expressive symbols are representations.

Visual culture, is important because it is a study of a society, group or community share the same practices in which meanings and messages are made out through visual and textual world of representations, and the way in which is engaged though communicative and symbolic activities. Here is an example of a society of Harry Potter fans, which can be seen as a culture of its own.

Sir E.B Tylor an anthropologist however define culture as something that is complex which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and other capabilities and habits acquire by man as a member of society (Sardar and Look, 2005).

To understand cultural studies further, the major concept in cultural studies is that of signs, which consists of a signifier and the signified. This is important in cultural studies because language is a cultural phenomenon, which produces meaning by a system of relationships, by having a network where there are similarities and differences. For example, the way a person eat or dress or communicate between one another, can be studied as signs, in which is the key to understand social life.

Durkheim too, saw the society as a structured system which consists of institutions, established pattern of behavior and a shared language which shapes our lives ( Billington et al, 1991).

Culture as a representation and a discourse

Discourses are dialogues that varies according to the kinds of social institutions and practices in which they take place (Billington et al, 1991). Words and expressions that are used, where their meanings alter from one discourse to another in relation to what social positions of those who are using them.

Stuart hall sees, representation as something that always involves ideology, ideology are images, concept and premises that provides the framework through which a culture represent, interpret, understand and make sense of come aspect of social existence (Griffin, 2009), it is a study field that requires, encoding and decoding of socio-cultural rules.

To conclude, it should be understood that there are many meaning for culture. The main focus of cultural studies in this post is on visual cultural studies where the media culture communicates its information through their medium. Discourse understood as a cultural framework, where we understand discourses through our understand of its representation.

Understanding theory with the use of a media text

Discourse: Sleeping Beauty

Ideologies: The woman looks beautiful, the prince charming saves the women, heterosexual relationship, true love is god sent.

Politics: politics of gender relations, politics of gender masculinity and feminity, politics of social classes.

Reference:

Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory (7^th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill

Grisworld, W. (2006) Culture and Societies in A Changing World. (3rd ed.). USA: Pine Forge Press

Sardar, Z., & Loon, B., V. (2005). Introducing cultural studies: A Graphic Guide. Cambridge: Totem Books. Available from Ebrary.

Agenda-Setting Theory of Maxwell McCombs & Donald Gilbert

Agenda-Setting theory is an approach that illustrates how media influences the agenda of public issues, by presenting a routine structuring of social and political reality (Laughey, 2008), and because of this frequent presentation of issues, the public will come to believe that those issues that are being presented are a lot more important than the others.

This theoretical approach is concerning about how, the public opinions and the minds of the people are shaped by the media industry, into believing that what is portrayed by the media and how the world is portrayed by the media is the real thing. For example, everyone believes that the sun is yellow, but scientifically the sun is white, because the atmosphere on earth scatters light from the sun, which makes the sun changes color; going to the main point, this just shows how much the media industry is so strong that they can make people believe and accept something that is not true to be true.

The above example really reflects the agenda-setting mantra- the media aren’t very successful in telling us what to think, but they are stunningly successful in telling us what to think about; basically it means that the media tends to make some issues more important than the others, which is also called a salience (Griffin, 2009).

McCombs and Gilbert, pointed out that there were two important points in agenda-setting which was how they stated to power of the press and that individuals were free to choose in which public issue they believe is important or not (Laughey, 2008). Ting is

There are two levels of Agenda-Setting:-

The first level (object salience) Agenda Setting is what people choose to believe which issue or subject is the most important

The Second level (attribute salience) Agenda Setting is the focus on the specific part of the subject or issues.

The Function of Agenda Setting

Media Agenda: The issues that are considered important by the media

Public Agenda: The issues that are discusses in public and in which the public consider to be important

Policy Agenda: The issues that the policy makers like legislators and government officials consider important.

Corporate Agenda: The issues that business cooperation considers that is important to them.

According to McCombs and Gilbert, there are four rhetorical cues that affect the agenda-setting process, in which this process draws the audience’s attention towards the salience of particular views item (Laughey, 2008):-

1) Frequency of repetition

a. The ‘rolling’ news of stories which is regarded as important

2) The prominence of which items are displayed

a. Larger headlines on the news, by definition are assumed to have greater importance than smaller headlines.

3) The degree of conflict present in the news item

a. Political scandals attracts a lot more newsworthy than the actual political consensus

4) The Framing of news item- in what context and when it appears

a. Summer holiday weekends are often a cue to talk about, excessive alcohol consumptions

The whole purpose of framing is that, framing is a traditional part of agenda setting where, agenda setting looks at which issues or topics are important, and by framing it organizes to a point where the public would accept it as important.

Frame Processes

1) Frame amplification- the defining of a set of problems and issues, which only applies on existing frames

2) Frame extension- adding additional frames of certain issues or dimensions, which has no relevance to the existing frame.

3) Frame bridging- the composition of linking two or more ideologically matching, but structurally unconnected frames.

4) Frame transformation- changing the original structure and content of a frame to something else

In conclusion, agenda setting helps people understand how media is represented and how the media chooses what it wants people to believe and take in. The media plays such a big role in our lives that, now by understanding what goes behind every media issues and problems through the use of understand, we should be picky about what to take in and defining between truth and lies.

Understand agenda setting with a media text

These are just a few examples to show how the media chooses which items to be put into the front page. The newspaper that shows the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton as well as the newspaper showing Obama and his wife looking happy is put in front page because, the media is able to choose a media story that would interest the public, as majority of the public has interest in these types of news rather than other important political news that are going on.

Class Assignment

Priority of the government: spitting and urinating in public places, economy of the country, public education, social deviance.

1)Frame amplification: the main focus is the issue on public spitting and urinating because this can and will affect the well being of the country’s environment, as well as the economy of the country.

2) Frame Extension: with using the frame extension, an issue on how the lifestyle of the society will improve if this main problem of this article is controlled.

3) Frame Bridging- When the government is able to handle the country’s public issue, then they are able to improve the foreign investment and with the money that government gets, they are able to take some of the money to focus on education and health.

Priority of the public agenda: inadequate primary schools and education, high rates of criminal activities, children running around the streets of the community, and social havoc among the youths.

Frame amplification: the improvement in the education of the children will be beneficial to the public as they would be a lot more intellectual.

Frame extension: by having intellectual children there will be a boost in the economy as they will be able to produce a work force that are able to help the economy.

Frame Bridging: Looking at how the government would improve the schools, would take the roaming children off the streets, and when the public issue is solved, foreign country would not doubt to invest in this country.

Reference:

Griffin, E. (2009). A First look at Communication Theory. (7^th ed.). Glencoe, IL: McGraw-Hill.

Laughey, D. (2008). Key Themes in Media Theory. Buckingham: Open University Press. Retrieved from http://site.ebrary.com.ezproxy.ubd.edu.bn/lib/ubdlib/docDetail.action?docID=10229846&p00=key%20themes%20media%20theory