Carah and louw media and society

Note Taking On Carah And Louw: Making News: News

Read the following chapter of your textbook and upload your notes

Carah, N. & Louw, E. (2015). Making news. In N. Carah & E. Louw, Media and society: production, content and participation. Sage publications, Ltd. (pp.124-145)

Note-taking
DO NOT simply cut and paste quotations from the text to fulfill the requirements for taking notes for each subsection. You will not get any grade for doing this as this does not demonstrate your understanding. It only indicates that you can select quotations. Only use quotations in the manner indicated below, where the writers use particularly evocative language.

First contact
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You will understand more if you quickly scan the chapter. Read the questions that start the chapter, the writers’ objectives for the chapter (under the heading “In this chapter we”) and the conclusion. By reading these parts of the chapter you will understand the writers’ aims. You now have a map of the chapter that will help focus your thinking and evaluate what you are reading.

Identify the main focus of the chapter
In two or three sentences explain clearly what is the main claim that the writer is trying to make in the chapter and how it seems to contribute to the objectives laid out in the overall introduction to the book.

Focus on the claims and examples made under each subheading
Examine the subheadings the writers use as these will help you focus on the way in which the writers build the argument. Write each of the subheadings down. Read each section of the text under the subheadings and make the following notes

In one sentence identify the main claim being made in the subsection
When the writers use an illustrative example in a subsection, in one or two sentences explain what the example is and what it is being used to illustrate
If you find a quotation that you want to remember write Quotations I Wish to Remember and write the quotation including the page number
Apply your own lens to the content

Select something from the chapter that you found particularly evocative. Perhaps you found something particularly interesting, problematic, true or counter to your experience, true or counter to something you encountered in another class. Write a short paragraph of three or four sentences explaining what was evoked by reading this part of the text. Ensure that it is clear which part of the text you are referring to.

Ask questions of the content

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Rubric
Note-taking of the introductionNote-taking of the introductionCriteriaRatingsPtsThis criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeIdentifying the main focusIn two or three sentences explain clearly what is the main claim that the writer is trying to make in the chapter and how it seems to contribute to the objectives laid out in the introduction.2.0 ptsGoodSuccessfully identified the main claim in the text0.0 ptsUnsatisfactoryFails to identify the main claim of the introductory chapter2.0 pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeClaims in each subheadingAbility to identify the claims within each subheading, how examples are utilized and any evocative quotations5.0 ptsGoodSuccessfully identifies the main claim being made in each subsection and successfully explains how the examples are used in the subsection3.0 ptsMarginalLimited success in identifying the claims in subsections and/or explaining the uses made of the illustrative examples0.0 ptsUnsatisfactoryFails to identify the claims in the subsections and/or provides inadequate explanation of the uses made of illustrative examples.5.0 pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeApplying your own lensAbility to synthesize and analyze chapter content in relation to other knowledge.3.0 ptsGoodClearly identified an element of the chapter and intelligently demonstrates its links to other knowledge that the student has gained0.0 ptsUnsatisfactoryFails to synthesize his/her learning3.0 pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeQuestionPoses clarifying substantial questions of the text3.0 ptsGoodQuestions demonstrate careful consideration of the content of the chapter content and concepts.2.0 ptsUnsatisfactoryQuestions are poorly articulated or do not demonstrate substantive engagement with the content and concepts of the chapter0.0 ptsUnsatisfactoryNo questions were asked3.0 pts

Contents Companion Website Introduction

How is meaning made? How is power made and maintained? What does today’s culture industry look like? How do interactive media utilize and structure our participation? What is the role of professional communicators in the exercise of power? Engaging with critical debate about media production, content and participation Engaging with academic debate

Journal articles and academic publication 1 Meaning, Representation and Power

Defining meaning The power to influence meaning making

What is the relation between power and social elites? Where does power come from? What is the relationship between being embedded within a power relationship and free agency?

The struggle over meaning: introducing hegemony The more legitimacy dominant groups have, the less violence they need to employ Defining hegemony

The control of meaning: introducing ideology and discourse Ideology Discourse

Representation and power Control over representation

Mediatization and media rituals Conclusion Further reading

2 The Industrial Production of Meaning Controlling who makes meaning and where meaning is made Defining different types of culture industry

Privately-owned media State-licensed media Public service broadcasting State-subsidized media Communist media

Development elites and media The industrial production of meaning Mass communication The culture industry

Narrowing what we think about Narrowing what can be said Thinking dialectically: arguing for a contest of meanings

The liberal-democratic culture industry The culture industry in the interactive era Conclusion Further reading

3 Power and Media Production Meaning and power Becoming hegemonic

How do groups become hegemonic? Feudalism and early capitalism Managerial to global network capitalism

Hegemony and the art of managing discourses Managing the structures of meaning making Managing the meaning makers Regulating meaning-making practices Adapting and repurposing meanings Monitoring and responding to shifting meanings

Discursive resistance and weakening hegemonies Regulating and deregulating the circulation of cultural content

Generating consent for the regulation of the circulation of cultural content Using the legal system to prosecute pirates and criminals Using the political system to adapt the old rules or create new rules Negotiations with the new organizations to craft a new consensus

Shifting hegemonies A new hegemonic order

New communication technologies New communication channels undermined mass production and communication The emergence of niche markets and publics

Political leaders and new coalitions Conclusion Further reading

4 The Global Information Economy

The emergence of a global information economy The information communication technology revolution The end of the Cold War The emergence of the Pax Americana as an informal empire A globally networked elite Communicative capitalism

Reorganizing capitalism Conceptualizing networks

The internet as a distributed network Networked and flexible organizations and workplaces Networks in networks: the social web and everyday life

Flexible and networked capitalism Building domination Conclusion Further reading

5 Media and Communication Professionals Professional communicators

Controlling who can make meaning Professional communicators and power relationships Producing professional communicators

Immaterial and creative labour Hierarchies of communicative labour Freedom and autonomy ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ work

Professional ideology and the meaning of labour Identity and communication work: flexibility, networking, entrepreneurialism

Self-promotion Below-the-line work

Internships Conclusion Further reading

6 Making News The emergence of professional journalism The sites of news making Routinizing news making

News is a window on the world Formulas and frames Contacts Induction into newsroom procedures

The presentation of news Symbiotic relationships in news making

News and public relations News and power relationships News making in the interactive era

Data and journalism Witnesses with smartphones

Conclusion Further reading

7 Politics and Communication Strategists The rise of communication strategists as political players

Why did a class of political communication professionals arise? Undermining the establishment media

What is strategic political communication? Spin tactics Managing journalists

Changes to the political process Strategic communication changes political parties Strategic communication changes political leaders Strategic communication makes politics more resource intensive Strategic communication makes popular culture central to political communication Strategic communication amplifies the affective and emotional dimension of political communication Strategic communication undermines deliberative modes of political communication Strategic communication undermines the power of the press within the political process Strategic communication turns politics into a permanent campaign

Barack Obama’s publicity machine Visual communication Managing data, audiences and participation Online ground game Using data Data drives content Decision making becomes pragmatic, incremental and continuous

Conclusion Further reading

8 Producing and Negotiating Identities Empowering and disempowering identities

What is identity? Identity is embedded within representation Identity is social and constructed Identity is relational and differential Identity is never accomplished

Making collective identity From the mass to the individual

Cultural imperialism Identity politics Using apology to position national identity within universal values of global network capitalism

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Apology and branding Australia Using advertising to craft national identity

Acquiring visibility within the universal values of global network capitalism

Challenging mainstream media portrayals of identity Resisting the universal values of global network capitalism The power of identity within a global network Conclusion Further reading

9 Consumer Culture, Branding and Advertising What is a brand?

Brands and mass consumption Brands are social processes

Brands and culture The creative revolution

Brand value The labour of branding

Analysts, researchers and communication professionals Designers Front-line staff Cultural producers Consumers

Brands, social space and participation Brands at cultural events Brands and mobile media devices

Ethical brands and everyday life The ethical consumer The ‘ethicalization’ of everyday life

Conclusion Further reading

10 Popular Culture Popular culture and governing everyday life

Popular culture is a symptom of larger social formations Popular culture in neoliberal times

Popular culture and government at a distance Popular culture as lived social practices

Ordinary people and popular culture’s promises and practices Access to reality Participation and surveillance Rules, regulations and personal responsibility Producing commercially valuable and politically useful identities

Personal responsibility on talk shows and reality TV Performing our identities

Popular culture’s explanation of social relationships Television drama and making sense of the global network society

Representing ‘real’ life? Critical apathy

Comedy news and political participation Powerful people making fun of themselves Cynical participation Profitable niche audiences

Conclusion Further reading

11 Social Media, Interactivity and Participation Interactivity, participation and power What are social media?

Users create and circulate content Commercialization of the web Media devices and everyday life Social media and social life Social media and the active user

Interactive media enable new forms of participation Considering the quality of participation

Interactive media are responsive and customized Customization Predictions and decisions Algorithmic culture Shaping how we experience space

Interactive media watch us What is surveillance?

Disciplinary and productive forms of surveillance Participation and public life

Blogging Social media and political events

Mapping out positions on interactivity Managing participation Conclusion Further reading

12 Mobile Media, Urban Space and Everyday Life Media and urban space A new geography of power

Global cities Relocating industrial areas Dead zones

Public and private life in media cities Smartphones Smartphones and images Smartphones and communicative enclosure Wearable and responsive media devices

Publicity and intimacy Publicity Intimacy

Work with mobile devices Mobile device factories Mobile professionals

Conclusion Further reading

13 Constructing and Managing Audiences Producing audiences

How are media organizations funded? How are audiences made and packaged? How do audiences make value? From mass to niche From representational to responsive control The work of producing audiences

Audiences and work The work of watching The work of being watched

Ranking, rating and judging Audience participation in the work of being watched

Creating networks of attention and affect Identifying with the promotional logic of the culture industry Articulating cynical distance

The watched audience The work of being watched is central to responsive forms of control

Predicting and discriminating To make predictions about us and our lives To discriminate between individuals

Conclusion Further reading

14 Managing Participation Meaning and power Decoding and debunking

Debunking reinforces dominant power relationships Meaning and power in the interactive era

Difference between speaking and being heard Difference between being a participant and managing participation in general Difference between decoding representations and managing representation Difference between being understood and being visible

Managing participation Flexible identities Giving an account of ourselves and recognizing others From television to the smartphone Conclusion Further reading

References Index

Media and Society

Media and Society Production, Content and Participation

Nicholas Carah Eric Louw

SAGE Publications Ltd

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© Nicholas Carah and Eric Louw 2015

First published 2015

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All material on the accompanying website can be printed off and photocopied by the purchaser/user of the book. The web material itself may not be reproduced in its entirety for use by others without prior written permission from SAGE. The web material may not be distributed or sold separately from the book without the prior written permission of SAGE. Should anyone wish to use the materials from the website for conference purposes, they would require separate permission from SAGE. All material is © Nicholas Carah and Eric Louw 2015

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ISBN 978-1-4462-6768-4

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https://study.sagepub.com/carahandlouw
Introduction

How is Meaning Made? For a long time accounts of media and cultural production have used the encoding and decoding of meaning as a basic conceptual schema. This schema places the many moments in the process of mediated communication in relation to one another. Meanings are created or encoded in an institutional and social context, transferred by technical means, and received or decoded in another context. Each moment in the process has a bearing on the other moments, but no moment dominates the others completely. Media are social processes of transferring and circulating meaning. This process matters because it shapes how we understand the world and our relationships with others. How we understand the world organizes how we act in it. The process of sharing meaning is intrinsic to the exercise of power. Those who have the material and cultural resources to control, organize and regulate the sharing of meaning can shape how flows of resources and relationships between people are organized.

In the field of media and communication some accounts, and even some periods, have paid more attention to one moment or another. Political economy and production approaches have been charged with devoting too much attention to the process of encoding and determining that it shapes all the other moments in the process. Audience and reception approaches have been said to too easily equate the audience’s active decoding of meaning with having power. For the most part though the media and communication field is interested in both how meanings are created, encoded and disseminated and how they are received, decoded and recirculated. In this book we build on this encoding and decoding heritage by taking as a starting point the proposition that we can only understand moments in this process when we consider how they are related to each other. To understand meaning and power we have to understand how relationships between people are shaped within flows of meaning organized by institutions, practices and technologies. The book examines the relationships between powerful groups, the means of communication and the flow of meaning.

This is a book about meaning, power and participation. We use meaning to recognize one another. By making and sharing meaning we acknowledge the existence of others, their lives, their desires and their claims for a place in the world. Meanings are created via the negotiation we undertake with each other to create social relationships, institutions and shared ways of life. The process of maintaining relationships with each other is embedded in relations of power. We relate with each other because we seek to realize our will, our desires, our ways of life, in conjunction or competition with others. The sharing of meaning facilitates

both consensus and conflict. Groups aim to generate consensus for the social relationships and institutions they have established, and they generate conflicts and contests that might change social relationships or distribution of resources in ways that might benefit them.

How is Power Made and Maintained? Media and culture are central to generating consent and organizing participation. For much of the twentieth century, accounts of meaning and power focused on the industrialization of meaning making. One of the key institutions of the industrialized mass society is a culture industry. The culture industry is composed of the range of institutions that make meaning and use it to shape and manage mass populations. These institutions include schools, universities, government policy making, and importantly for this book, industries that produce media and popular culture. We trace the role of the culture industry in creating national identities and facilitating the management of industrial economies. The media and cultural industries that emerged in the twentieth century produced content for mass audiences. This was a result of a range of social, political, economic and technological factors. Mass media like radio, television and print could only produce one flow of content to a mass audience. Everyone in the audience watched the same television programme at the same time, or read the same newspaper. This system suited nation states and industries that demanded mass publics and markets. Nation states sought to fashion enormous populations into coherent collective identities; industrial factories could only produce a standardized set of products for a mass market.

The audience of the industrial-era culture industry was largely conceptualized as being on the receiving end of a standardized flow of meanings. There were a variety of accounts of the audience’s role in this process. Some critical and dystopian accounts saw the audience as passive recipients of meaning who were manipulated by the powerful groups that controlled cultural production. The importance of radio, cinema and other kinds of mass media propaganda in the rise of authoritarian fascist and communist societies seemed to demonstrate the power of industrial cultural production to direct enormous populations. More nuanced accounts developed too; these views pointed to the way that the industrial production of meaning shaped the cultural world within which people lived their lives. The media couldn’t tell people what to think, but it could tell them what to think about. Media industries played a critical role in creating the frame through which people viewed the world and providing the symbolic resources that people used to fashion their identities. While the audience actively decided what to do with the meanings and symbolic resources they had access to, they had little input into the broad cultural schema in which they lived. The culture industry was a key mechanism in establishing and maintaining this schema. It limited audience participation to a representational frame constructed and managed by powerful interests. These arguments were powerful because they articulated how the media controlled

populations even as they were actively involved in decoding and circulating meaning.

Over the course of the twentieth century, arguments developed that accounted for the active participation of audiences in the reception and circulation of meaning. Some of these accounts were functionalist and instrumental. They sought to explain to states or corporations how the management of populations depended on more than just creating and disseminating meanings. They also had to work to fashion the social contexts within which individuals interpreted and decoded meanings. Other accounts have been much more celebratory: they saw the audience’s capacity to interpret meanings as proof that the culture industry couldn’t exert as much power over populations as critics claimed. Audiences were always free to decode and create meanings offered by the culture industry. These accounts focused on the creative capacity of audience members to resist, rearrange and reappropriate mass- produced meanings to their own identities, wills and worlds. With the rise of interactive media technologies from the 1990s onwards, these celebratory accounts took on a life of their own. If the ‘problem’ with the industrial culture industry was the way it thwarted participation and relegated audiences to the reception and interpretation of pre-made meanings, then interactive technologies offered a solution. The audience could actively participate in the creation of meaning. This book considers several important rejoinders to these claims.

Conceptual Map A series of key ideas form a map for the arguments in this book. We begin with two foundational concepts: meaning and power.

Meanings are the elementary building block of human communication. Humans use meanings to express their perceptions, intentions, feelings and actions. Meanings take shape in language, images, gestures and rituals. They indicate how we make sense of ourselves, each other and the world we live in. We use meaning to recognize one another. By making and sharing meaning we acknowledge the existence of others, their lives, their desires and their claims for a place in the world. Meanings are created via the negotiation we undertake with each other to create social relationships, institutions and shared ways of life. Power is the ability to realize your will against the will of others. Relationships between people are characterized by struggles over material, economic, political, symbolic and cultural resources.

Making and maintaining power depends in part on the capacity to control meaning . In any human society, relationships can be observed between powerful groups, the means of communication and the flow of meaning.

Three concepts are useful in examining the relationship between meaning and power: ideology, hegemony and discourse .

Ideology is a framework of ideas upon which people make decisions and act. Critical studies of media and communication have often examined ideology in order to demonstrate how powerful groups construct frameworks of meaning that cohere with their interests. Hegemony is a cultural condition where a particular way of life and its associated ideas, identities and meanings are accepted as common sense by a population. Groups are hegemonic when their ideas seem natural, inevitable and common sense. Groups have to work at achieving and maintaining their hegemonic status. Discourse refers to a system of meanings and ideas that inform the rules, procedures and practices of a society and its institutions. Discourses affirm some people and their practices, and discourage others. They mark out some ways of life as acceptable and others as unacceptable.

Exercising power – by producing and managing ideologies, hegemonies and discourses – depends in part on the capacity to control the creation of representations and identities.

Representation is the social process of making and exchanging meaning. People use media to construct a view of reality. How people understand the world organizes how they act in the world. Identity is produced by representations, and is the process of locating ourselves within the social world and its power relationships. We do this by drawing on the representations and discourses available to us.

During the twentieth century, the process of constructing representations and identities was organized in a mass culture industry.

The culture industry is composed of the range of institutions that make meaning and use it to shape and manage mass populations. The culture industry employs a class of professional communicators whose job is to make and manage meaning.

Over the past generation parts of the culture industry have become interactive . In addition to making and disseminating meanings to mass audiences, the culture industry relies on the participation of audiences in the production and circulation of meaning. Audiences receive, decode, circulate and

create meanings. Audiences are also subject to mass surveillance . The culture industry invests significant resources in watching and responding to audiences. The contemporary culture industry exercises power by relying on interactive technologies to watch, organize and control the participation of audiences.

What Does Today’s Culture Industry Look Like? The mass culture industry of the twentieth century still exists. Every day people all over the world watch television, listen to the radio, read news, go to the movies and see advertising on billboards as they travel through the city. Arguments about the capacity of the culture industry to shape shared ways of life, and the role that audiences play as active participants in that process, still matter. The development of interactive technologies has dramatically extended the role the culture industry plays in organizing everyday life. The emergence of an interactive culture industry is embedded within the development of a global, networked and informational form of capitalism. Just as the mass societies of the twentieth century used mass media to fashion mass collective identities and mass markets, the networked and flexible economy of the twenty-first century seeks adaptable identities, niche markets, and fragmented and asymmetrical flows of content. A flexible economy based on the mass customization of goods, services and experiences is interconnected with a culture industry that can produce multiple identity-based audiences on-demand. If the industrial economy of the twentieth century created one kind of product for a mass market, the flexible economy of the twenty-first century can create many customized products for many niche markets at once. A mode of production that can cater to niche lifestyle groups is interconnected with the development of a media system that can simultaneously fashion, target and manage multiple identities.

The twentieth-century culture industry was criticized for its disciplinary forms of representational control, limiting the range of symbolic and cultural resources audiences had access to, and thereby containing the extent to which populations participated in the creation and circulation of meaning. The interactive culture industry appears to dramatically open up the space within which ordinary people can make and circulate meaning. Where the twentieth-century culture industry’s mode of control could be explained in a representational sense – captured in Lasswell’s (1948) formula ‘who says what to whom in what channel with what effect’ – the interactive culture industry of today adds participatory and reflexive modes of exercising power to the mix. In this media system, telling audiences what to think about is augmented with giving them constant opportunities to express themselves within spaces and processes where the culture industry can track, channel, harness and respond to those expressions. Where once the culture industry might have acted to thwart audience participation by limiting who can create and circulate meaning, today’s culture industry works to stimulate audience participation in meaning making. What celebratory accounts of audience participation often miss is that the culture industry’s method of making and managing populations has enlarged to include participatory and responsive techniques. These forms of control

operate by getting audiences to interact within communicative enclosures where their meaning making can be monitored, channelled and harnessed. Today’s culture industry is far more permissive and participatory, but is also more responsive and deeply embedded into everyday life.

How Do Interactive Media Utilize and Structure Our Participation? Think of the differences between television and smartphones. Television is emblematic of the mass culture industry, the smartphone illustrative of the networked culture industry. Television beams one stream of images into the homes of a population. Those populations watch television each morning and evening. They make sense of the world via a flow of images created by professional communicators who control who gets to speak and how the world is represented. Television offers a representational mode of control; it uses a flow of images to shape the identities and practices of populations. With television everyone sees the same flow of meaning at the same time. Broadcast television watched by mass audiences fashions collective identities and ways of life. The smartphone also distributes a continuous flow of images to audiences. This flow of images though is dynamic. Each audience member sees a different flow of images depending on their identity and place in social networks. The flow constantly adapts to their preferences and practices. It is a mixture of content created by professional communicators, cultural intermediaries and peers. Nearly all of the content we see on our smartphone flows through networks made and maintained by the culture industry. Most of the content that flows through our smartphone is either produced by professional communicators or circulated within networks where professional communicators monitor us. Furthermore, we carry our smartphones with us all day. They passively monitor our movements through the city, our interactions with friends, and increasingly our expressions, moods and bodies. Television was confined to the home, was often switched off, and could only distribute meaning (it couldn’t watch or listen to us). The smartphone is constantly attached to our body, always on, sends and receives meaning, and enables data collection. The smartphone offers a far more flexible, responsive and continuous way of communicating with, monitoring and managing populations. Where television was central to the fashioning of mass collective identity, the smartphone facilitates the production and positioning of identities within networks.

Interactive media have been celebrated for the way they afford new forms of participation, and critiqued for the way they dramatically extend the use of information and meaning in the management of populations. Audience participation is integral to this culture industry, but this doesn’t mean that audiences have more power or control. The more audiences participate, the more they contribute to the development of networks, flows of meaning and collections of data that enable the more reflexive and real-time management of populations. We examine throughout the book how news, politics, brands and popular culture rely on the participation of

audiences. We aim to develop an account of how the interactive culture industry’s construction of opportunities for audiences to speak is interrelated with the enormous investment in technologies that enable it to watch everyday life.

What is the Role of Professional Communicators in the Exercise of Power? In this book we are particularly interested in the work of professional communicators in managing meaning and power. In an interactive culture industry the work of professional communicators extends beyond the production of meanings as content to include managing the participation of cultural intermediaries and audiences in the ongoing circulation of content. Professional communicators don’t just create and disseminate meaning; they manage other meaning makers, and they watch and respond to populations in real time. Professional communicators are also involved in creating and managing social and urban spaces within which they organize audience participation. Rather than just create meanings and representations distributed to mass populations, professional communicators manage open-ended processes of meaning making in complex and diffused networks. Professional communicators need to be highly skilled at using their communicative, strategic and analytical abilities to create and maintain social relationships within structures controlled by the culture industry. The work of professional communication involves more than just the creation of persuasive or valuable content: it extends to managing space, populations and complex communication processes.

Many of the theoretical ideas in this book are critical ones. Critical theories are concerned with how the construction of social relationships is embedded in the exercise of power. Critical theories offer arguments about the role media play in shaping our social world. They account for individual, institutional, social, cultural, historical and technological dimensions of media and communication. These arguments are valuable to us as scholars, citizens and professional communicators. Understanding how uneven flows of symbolic resources shape the world we live in makes us more critically informed citizens. It helps us to reflect on how we might be heard in meaningful ways, how we might participate in communicative activities that materially shape the world we live in, and how we might create new kinds of social relationships. The best professional communicators have a nuanced understanding of the place of media in broader social, cultural and political processes. Being a leading professional communicator involves more than just having communicative skills to use technologies to produce compelling content or create interactive platforms that harness audience participation. Professional communicators also need the critical and analytical ability to determine how they contribute to the construction of social relationships and structures. Critical theories prompt us to think carefully about human experience and relationships. Even if you aren’t especially interested in the consequences of using meaning to exercise power,

critical theories offer ways of developing a detailed understanding of the relationship between meaning and power. This relationship is the business of professional communication. Understanding this relationship can inform a variety of strategic ends. Critical ideas aren’t ones that think power is bad or the media are bad, or that attempt to unmask and reveal how things really are. Power is important; it governs how we get things done in the world. Critical theory doesn’t attempt to imagine a world without power, but rather to examine how power is organized. Critical ideas are ones that pay attention to how power is exercised and how meaning shapes relationships between people. Power isn’t a simple one-way application of brute force; power works through a combination of disciplinary and participatory mechanisms. Populations are easiest to manage when they consent to, and participate in, established power relationships. The best leaders – regardless of their political or personal views about media and power – understand the relationships between meaning and power.

Engaging With Critical Debate About Media Production, Content and Participation The book is organized in three parts. The first part outlines key conceptual ideas in our study of meaning and power, including: hegemony, discourse, ideology, representation, rituals and the culture industry. We also examine the development of the culture industry in the twentieth century and its transition to a networked and interactive culture industry in the past generation. We conclude this section by examining the work of professional communicators in the contemporary culture industry. In the second part of the book we examine several modes of production within the culture industry – news, politics, identity, branding and popular culture. Throughout this section we examine the shift from the production of mass audiences and identities in the twentieth century to the management of a network of flexible identities and audiences in the contemporary culture industry. In the final part of the book we consider in detail the forms of participation and control central to the ongoing development of the interactive culture industry. In the conclusion we examine how the contemporary culture industry assembles a network of representational, participatory and responsive modes of control. Meaning is fundamental to the exercise of power, but not only because it tells us what to think about. By taking part in networks of meaning making we make ourselves a visible participant in the power relationships the culture industry manages.

Engaging With Academic Debate Throughout the book we cite work by scholars in the field, and we encourage you to go and read their work to extend your thinking, consider our point of view, and come to a view of your own. This book, like all academic publication, is not a stand-alone work. It is situated in a broader academic debate. Understanding how academic publication works and how to read journal articles will help you make better sense of the ideas and arguments in this book.

Journal articles and academic publication A journal article is a research study or essay where academics present their research findings and arguments to a scholarly field. To be published in a journal an article must be blind peer-reviewed. This process ensures that research is appropriately evaluated by experts in the field before it can be published. When an academic submits an article for publication in a journal the editor anonymizes the submission and sends it on to two or more experts in the field. Those experts read the submission and respond to the editor with their comments about the article and recommendation on whether or not it should be published. The reviewers make two judgements. The first judgement is about the rigour of the article’s argument, method and findings. The article must conform to the scholarly norms and principles of the field. The second judgement is about the contribution of the article to debate. The article must offer some new ideas and insights and help to further important debates in the field. Journals are a forum for iterative and ongoing debate. Consider a journal article as being one part of a larger conversation. Whatever journal article you are reading will be responding to what scholars in the field have had to say in the past, and in time – if the article is a good one – future scholars will respond in turn. The purpose of academic journals is to animate a structured conversation between researchers where they share their research and arguments in a considered and rigorous way.

Journals are the bedrock of any academic field. They are the institution through which experts construct and manage the production of ideas that shape and define their fields. They are the forum where ideas and debates are mapped out, critiqued, presented and debated. Without journals there would be no shared mechanisms for academics to disagree with each other, challenge each other and support each other in a constructive way. Good journal articles are those that can articulate a problem that matters to the field, challenge current thinking in a productive way, and map out a rigorous method, findings and argument that suggest a way forward for those in the field. Journal articles that have been published recently give you an insight into the debates that matter right now in the field. But that doesn’t mean that older articles aren’t still relevant and important. If you find a debate or idea in an older article that is useful and relevant, then use it. The important thing with using older articles is that you consider how to contextualize it within contemporary debates. Look for who has cited, engaged with or extended the debate since the article was published.

On the companion website of this book, we provide you with a selection of journal articles we’ve specifically chosen to help you with your study and research. They’re free to download and we encourage you to use this ‘reading a journal article’ guide

to help improve your essays and take your studies deeper. Go to study.sagepub.com/carahandlouw and read on!

How to Read a Journal Article Not all journal articles are the same, but they do all tend to have some fundamental elements. If you understand what these elements are, how to find them and why they matter it will help you to understand articles, evaluate their quality, read more efficiently and incorporate their arguments into your own writing.

There are five elements you should aim to identify in any journal article you read:

a significant question or claim a position in the academic debate an explanation of the research method or approach a presentation of the findings and argument a statement of the implications and contributions of the research study.

Question or claim The first element to look for when reading a journal article is the main question the author poses or the main claim they are making. This question or claim effectively sets the frame through which the author wants the reader to judge their writing. The editor of the journal, when agreeing to publish the article, would have decided that the question or claim is an important one and that the author clearly demonstrated it in their writing. You will usually find this claim in the first section of the article. Once you’ve found it, use that claim as the foundation upon which the article is built. The author will also explain why their question or claim is significant and who or what it matters to. The significance might be presented in relation to the academic field, a policy or governance problem, or events that matter to politics, cultural life or an industry.

Position in the academic debate The presentation of a question or claim is interrelated with a review of the relevant academic literature. In some articles this will be presented as a clear literature review section; in other articles the first few pages of the article will weave together the author’s claim and question, with an analysis of relevant literature. This might not be titled ‘literature review’ but come under several themed subheadings.

The purpose of this section of a journal article is not just to summarize the debate, but to organize it and frame it. A good literature review will set out competing perspectives or clearly articulate shortcomings and limitations in the current scholarly debate. The purpose is to demonstrate how the author’s question and claim will respond to significant debates in the literature. Sometimes the author will claim to fill a gap in the current debate by adding some now evidence; in other cases the author will claim to correct or refute a significant assumption or claim in the literature by providing confounding evidence or demonstrating how new developments change previous understandings.

The academic literature is always under construction: journal articles don’t aim to end the debate with a final piece of definitive knowledge, but rather contribute to the ongoing effort to push debate forward. The engagement with the literature at the start of a journal article aims to position the article in relation to those debates. Sometimes the literature review will position the study’s contribution as an ‘applied’ one, other times it will be ‘conceptual’. An applied contribution is where existing ideas from the literature are taken and applied or tested in a new context. For example, if research has mainly been conducted with people in one setting (like a city), new research might test those ideas by examining people in a different setting (like a rural area). A conceptual contribution is where existing ideas from the literature are reformulated, or new ideas are proposed, as a way of contending with new developments in technology, society or culture.

At the end of this section of a journal article you should have a clear idea of the debate the author is engaging with, why that debate matters and how they intend to contribute to it. As a reader the literature not only familiarizes you with a debate but also offers you some reference points for your own research. Often, a good way to target your reading is to go out and engage with the authors that others are engaging with. If you find a journal article about a topic or issue that is relevant to you, then check out who the author is engaging with and follow their lead. If you read authors that are citing each other then you are more likely to find a coherent conversation to ground your own thinking and writing within.

Explanation of research method or approach Once an author has explained their question and claim, and why it matters, and then situated it within current academic debate, they will then set out how they went about doing their research. This is where they explain how they will make an original contribution to the literature.