Week 4, Birmingham School

Question 1

Birmingham School

Answer 1

A group of interdisciplinary scholars with a radical orientation and who are influenced by Marxism.

Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies

Shaped by everyday practices of “ordinary people” and the role of media in their cultural practices.

Methods beyond textual analysis for research.

Question 2

Stuart Hall

Answer 2

Director for CCCS. Influenced by Gramsci.

Interested in how communication relates to power.

How are people understanding media texts and how are they shaped by larger power structures?

Question 3

Hall believed that there was a complex relationship between

Answer 3

production and consumption.

Question 4

There are 2 equally important processes that result in media communication and they are:

Answer 4

Encoding/Decoding

Question 5

Encoding

Answer 5

`Where message is produced, what the media makers are doing.

Messages contain dominant/preferred meanings with dominant ideological order imprinted in them.

Constructs some of the limits and parameters within which decoding operates.

Question 6

Decoding

Answer 6

Media audiences.

Process of making meaning.

Preferred meanings may be decoded… or not!

Question 7

Both processes of encoding and decoding are shaped by

Answer 7

frameworks of production, relations of production, and technical infrastructure.

Question 8

Audiences decode from three hypothetical positions:

Answer 8

• Dominant –> confirms social order
• Negotiated –> mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements
• Oppositional –> alternative frame of reference

Question 9

Culture Jamming

Answer 9

Media audiences appropriate existing culture material as a strategy of resistance.

Question 10

Why is the sender/receiver model problematic?

Answer 10

Because the receiver cannot talk back.

Question 11

Media consumption is a ____, shaped around a _______ _____ between media producers and consumers.

Answer 11

Media consumption is a process, shaped around a complex relationship between media producers and consumers.

Question 12

Active Audiences

Answer 12

Audiences are not passive, but are active in making meaning from texts.

Question 13

Hall’s theoretical model challenges

Answer 13

arguments made about audiences by the Frankfurt school.

Question 14

Cultural studies is invested in concepts such as

Answer 14

power, ideology and hegemony.