Stuart Hall Cultural Studies

I think the realist, linguistic, and Discursive position all play a role in Race. There are genetic differences in people, differences occur through our different languages and cultures, and through the systems of thought and language we use to make sensee of our differences. I don't think we can say that one position is more right than the others. Maybe its just how my system of thought and my language come into play, just like Hall said. I don't know if that is correct to call what I am and how i view race. I guess Hall is correct that we have different systems of thought that we use to make use of the differences, but then again everyone has a different system of thought. I'm not to sure what to make of his thoughts. I mean it makes sense, but what exactly does his ideas do for the world to see everything the same.



I picked the part of Do the right hting that Sut Jhally used in the movie we had to watch. Like him i think it shows exactly what these three positions mean and how the men in this clip use them. All of hte guys use descriptors that either talk about genetic differences, cultural differences and thought differences.

"...where I'm from, we believe all sorts of things that aren't true. We call it 'history.'"

For centuries the media has influenced the way society thinks and feels. However whether the media influences intentionally or not is another debate. Stuart Hall is a retired professor of sociology at the Open University. Hall is responsible for the communications theory of Cultural Studies. Although Hall believed that media does produce images that may at times influence society his theory states that the way a theory is interpreted is left up to the people. When I read the chapter I visualized Hall's theory similar to the human digestive system. The viewers eat the information that is being given to them and as they digest the body decides what to do with the "food." Is it believable and used to better the body or is it disagreeable and turned to waste? This is where the obstinate audience comes into play. Is the "food" operating inside the dominant code and accepted, applying a negotiable code, or will it be substituting an oppositional code?

It's not just the words we speak that can interrupted oppositely but it's also visual images or even people.

In the musical Wicked the Wizard sings a song to Elephaba about one person can be looked at completely oppositely by different people. Here is a video clip from the show and the lyrics so you can read at your own pace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-WxYP3R1S8

http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/wicked/wonderful.htm

I still have one last question. Who is the person who decided what was wrong and what was right? What is true and what is false? And why have we believed them all this time?

Semiotics

Semiotics is a theory by Roland Barthes. Semiotics is the study of the social production of meaning from sign systems. In other words, it is the analysis of anything that can stand for something else (Griffin 323). According to Barthes, a "sign" is the combination of the signifier and the signified. The "signifier" is the actual image of the sign, as we see it through our senses. The "signified" is the meaning we associate with the sign. Signs carry ideological baggage/meaning with them, wherever they go. This ideological baggage/meaning is called "connotation" (Griffin 324).
The example that I found to illustrate Roland Barthes' Semotics is the well-known Oscar. The Oscar is the award that is given out at the Academy Awards Ceremony.

The Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnGtmKEPko4 (The embedding option was disabled, so you have to go to the site)

The signifier is the golden Oscar statue. The signified is respect. In the movie industry, if you win an Oscar, you receive a great deal of respect from your fellow peers and the public. The prestige-building Ocsar statue.

Semiotics in the World of Flowers

According to Roland Barthes, Semiotics is “the study of the social production of meaning from sign systems”, also known as “the analysis of anything that can stand for something else” (Griffin 324). Every sign in his eyes was a combination of a signifier (the physical form of the sign as we perceive it through our senses, also known as an image), and the signified (the meaning we associate with the sign (Griffin 325). According to Saussure, “semiotics tells us that we are always sending messages to other people and they are sending messages to us. But interpreting what these signs mean is a complicated matter” (Berger 7).



As seen in this video, there are many different interpretations and meanings behind roses and the different colors that they hold. Seeing as Valentine’s Day was somewhat recently, I thought that this example was fitting, because of how taxing it can be sometimes for men and women to interpret the meaning behind the different colored roses and flowers that they receive from others, whether it is on Valentine’s Day or not. I know that when I was in high school, around Valentine’s Day there was always a rose sale where one could send different colored roses to friends and loved ones, white, pink, or red, and it was always a challenge to decipher what it meant if you received one from a boy. I recall that if you received a white one it meant friendship, a pink one it meant I like you, and a red one it meant I love you, and yet it could not always 100% of the time be assumed that way.

I think if Barthes theory shows us anything, it is that different signs can really stand for a number of different things, and I think that is exactly what the above video fails to show. I know that in watching the video, I thought beforehand that a number of those different colored roses stood for different things then what the video said, but I think that is what the video does not portray. For example, I always believed that the yellow rose stood more for mourning and funerals and such, seeing as you tend to see them displayed so much in death situations, but the video instead said that the white rose stood for that. I think it is an interesting concept to think about, and I’d be curious to see what all of you think on the topic. What do you all think the different colors stand for? Do you think that they all have multiple meanings and can stand for different things, or can be interchangeable?

Media Ecology: Back in the Tribal Age

McLuhan's analysis of history places us in the electronic/digital age. He says that we are starting to revert to our original dominant sensor, which was hearing. I think that we are more in the digital age and are reverting to the "touch" sensor. People aren't necessarily talking on the phone, they are sending text messages, posting on line and using Facebook and Myspace. This is definitely the age of touch. There are some ways that hearing is still dominant, for one, listening and speaking work much better during team play on XBox live. Things that require speed are much more efficient using sound. The following clip is a history of how the cell phone is shaped. but the reason i picked this clip was to show some of the statistics is has on it.



This clip shows the transformation of the cell phone through the electronic age starting in 1985 and working its way up. This supports his claim that the hearing sense is returning and making us tribal again. However, there is this thing called text messaging. Around 1:59 in the clip one of the blurbs said "17 Billion text messages were sent worldwide in 2000. 250 billion in 2001, 500 billion in 2004, and 1.9 trillion in 2007... I think with the amount of texts flying around that we are not in the tribal age again, but we hit it briefly and are now in a completely different age using touch as our main sensor. We do it this with facebook and myspace websites, this enables us to stay in contact with people much easier. This new age is all about the words on the page.

Bret's Agenda-Setting Theory Analysis

In Maxwell McCombs & Donald Shaw’s Agenda-Setting Theory, their initial claim is that the news media does not tell the public what to think, but tells them what to think about. The mass media has the ability to transfer the importance of items on their news agendas to the public agenda. According to McCombs & Shaw, “we judge as important, what the media judge as important” (Griffin, 359). They know that people have their own minds and ideas of what each thinks are important. On the other hand, the people that are the most influenced by the media agenda are those with a high need for orientation or a high “index of curiosity.” McCombs & Shaw later concluded that the media does not only tell the public what to think about, but they also may tell the public how to think about it, what to think about it, and possibly what to do about it (Griffin, 366).



This is a CNN news clip about Michael Phelps being caught in a photograph, smoking marijuana out of a bong. This portrays the Agenda-Setting Theory, because it is a clip of news media that is telling the public that this is important. This clip extends to almost nine-minutes in length, so CNN must find it to be an important news topic. The news reporter starts off this segment mentioning that Michael Phelps is a “role model” and is asking for people’s opinion on what they think about his actions. Not only is the reporter helping to show the public how they should view Phelps’ actions, but he is asking other people for their opinions as well. This will help mold those watchers, which have a high “index of curiosity,” as to what they should think about the issue.

I agree with McCombs & Shaw in that the news media does shape what the public finds to be important. All news media outlets picked up the Michael Phelps smoking marijuana story and within a week, it seemed that a large amount of people were talking about it.

--Bret Schlein

Agenda-Setting Theory.

The Agenda-Setting Theory was established by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw. They believed that the, '"mass media [has] the ability to transfer the salience of items on their news agendas to make them public agendas"' (Griffin 359). In other words they believed that the media had the ability to form the publics opinion but that's not what their intention was. According to McCombs and Shaw, the media's agenda is to tell the public what they should be thinking about opposed to what they should be thinking and the ideas and opinions they should inevitably be conceiving.

The chapter on agenda-setting by Griffin goes into more detail about all aspects of the theory and how it's been tested and countered. One part of the chapter that most grabbed attention was not a quote but an actual section title within the chapter entitled, "Who Sets The Agenda For The Agenda Setters?" And within that section Griffin talks about an experiment that three gentleman by the names of Iyengar, Peters, and Kinder attempted to conduct that increased awareness to the global issues of economic inflation, national defense, and environmental pollution. The three men found that they were limited to choose what stories to do their experiment on from only stories that had been aired. Only three quarters of the stories that come across a news desk are actually aired on television. There is a lot of blame and fingerprinting to who is actually to blame but what I think it all boils down to is that we all want to make ourselves look good. I don't believe there is a conspiracy that all the news editors in the universe prevent all news from circulating and I don't agree that the subjects themselves that are being reported on all for the media to make themselves look good. Everyone is to blame because even if we don't make ourselves look good at one point in time you're either going to help someone else look good or buy into whatever agenda-setting techniques they've used to help form your opinions on what they want you to think about. Do you agree?

I'll leave you with this clip from an episode of West Wing. The entire time I read the section on agenda-setting I couldn't get this episode out of my head and I was so glad I was able to find a great clip on it.

In the following clip the White House's Press Secretary C.J. Cregg acts as the agenda setter for the media who acts as the agenda setter for the rest of the government and the American people.