Week 3: Raymond Williams/ Impact of technology on society/ Space and Place Flashcards
Raymond Williams
- wrote “Culture and Society”
- major theorist in the fields of media and cultural studies
Recap: MASS
1st - concentration of population in industrial towns
2nd - concentration of workers into factories
3rd - consequent development of an organised and self-organised working class
MASS
mass: new word for mob
Mass charasteristics
gullibility, fickleness, lowness of taste and habit
Mob
mob: opposite of culture - mass was something to be feared
Mass democracy
- a prejudice
- democracy equals majority rule, therefore:
mass democracy: mob rule/ rule of lowness or mediocrity - when we disagree with a political outcome, we often attribute it to the mass
BASICALLY: DEMOCRACY = GOOD
MASS DEMOCRACY = BAD
Mass communications
Advances in technology and travel - multiple transmission (one document shared with millions of others)
Mass observation
- wider literacy than before
- new institutions produced for working class by other classes
- historians tend to focus on the ‘‘bad’’ rather than the ‘‘good’’ observed of the masses
- we may unfairly judge other cultures based on our own habits (eg assuming someone is unintelligent because they are unable to read or write)
Recap: CULTURAL TRANSMISSION
- growth of institutions and systems make up the mass media
- implications for how we share experiences and experience collective memories
- selective reproduction of cultural forms
- selective extraction
- creative extension
- involves production and reproduction, repetition and creativity
Recap: MASS COMMS DIFFERENCES
- audience physically not present
- technical requirements (use of technology is compulsory to communicate)
- communications often commodified
- communications are restricted and regulated (censorship due to political or financial restrictions)
–> when considering mass comms, it is always useful to ask what is the IDEOLOGY behind the INSTITUTION and MESSAGE
Social space vs physical space
- words like ‘school’ or ‘home’ are referred to as physical buildings
- it took time to travel from one situation to another
- distance was a measure of social insulation and isolation
- the invention of the telegraph caused the first break between information movement and physical movement
- physical distance as a social barrier began to be bypassed through the shortening of ‘‘communication distance’’
Before electronic media
- messages in early media (stone/clay/parchment/paper) have physical volume and weight
- when they are heavy and unmovable, people have to go to a specific place to get them
- even when they are portable, they still have to be physically transported from place to place
Electronic media
- electronic messages do not make social entrances - they steal into places like “thieves in the night”
- they do not require permission to enter and invades into the home (eg when a TV, telephone or radio is in the home, spatial isolation have no effect on information flow - this is transforming physical and social space)
Outcome of electronic media
- as a result of electronically mediated interactions, the definitions of situations and behaviours are no longer determined by physical location (to be physically alone no longer meant that you are socially alone)
- electronic media reshape social situations and social identities (eg a prison used to be a place of information isolation, however, with electronic media, many prisoners share the privileges of the TV, radio and telephone)
- electronic media has changed live, mediated encounters
- physical presence was necessary for a live event before, however, now audiences can be ‘present’ at distant events.
- In return, a para-social relationship is formed - people experience each other through electronic media
Para-social relationships
- Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl suggests that the new media offer the illusion of face-to-face interaction with performers and political figures
- suggests that this created a new type of relationship
- viewers feel like they know the people they ‘‘meet’’ in TV (eg talk show hosts)
- many athletes, musicians, politicians are now judged not only by their talents but by their personalities too
- Horton and Wohl also noted that para-social relationships greatly impacted the ‘‘socially isolated, the socially inept, the aged and invalid, the timid and the rejected’’
