A lecture given to BA-1 student of IBCoM at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (2013)

1. INTERNATIONAL BACHELOR
COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA
Media Technology
Lela Mosemghvdlishvili
MP&I Lecture 6
Media Technology, lecture given
by Lela Mosemghvdlishvili at the
Guest lecture "gendered technologies" by Lela Mosemghvdlishvili is
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

2. Previous Lecture
• Active audiences and 'active' content
• Construction of Meaning
– agency of readers in sense making
• Encoding/Decoding Model
– the importance of the social-cultural
context
• Discourse and Discursive Resources
• 3 modes of reading

3. readers or
audience
Technology
media
industry
medial
message or
product
Simplified Model of Media and the Social World. Croteau, Hoynes & Milan, 2012.
Social WorldSocial WorldSocial WorldSocial World

5. today’s lecture
technological aspects of a medium
How do technological characteristics of a medium influence
content and readers?
development of medium theory
theories on the development and effects of
technology
Critique of Technological Determinism
Social Shaping of Technology
Critical Theory of Technology

6. medium - its characteristics and critique

7. a medium
producer medium audience
message message
NOISE NOISE
simplified model derived from Shannon and Weaver, 1949
encodes/transmits/stores information

8. Media

9. Printing (1450s)
Media

10. Man with a Movie Camera (1929) (by Dziga Vertov)

12. Development of Medium Theory
Walter Benjamin (1892 – 1940)
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
(1936)

13. Walter Benjamin
• associated with the Frankfurt School
• first systematic account of the mass
cultural effects in 20th
century
• he prefigures McLuhan’s “medium is a
message”
• argues that particular medium has a
specific grammar, which changes the way
meaning is structured and
transmitted/irrespective of artists’ intention

14. from artistic aura to mass mediated reality
Art as ritual (as part of
mystic/religious experience)
Art as exhibition (artworks of
worship became also objects of
admiration
 Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction
He identifies 3 major (historical) stages

15. art as ritual

16. art as exhibition

17. art in the age of mechanical reproduction

18. in the age of mechanical reproduction
• decline of ´aura´ (uniqueness, symbolic value)
• ability to circulate beyond physical home
• reproducibility
• optical unconscious (camera allows us to see for the first
time, what is not visible to necked eye)
• views on future
– mass media as fundamental, revolutionary force
– change in mode of artistic production (proliferation of
access) could lead to empowerment and
emancipation of masses

19. Recap (Benjamin)
• Commentary on art, photography, early cinema
• Fundamental change caused by technological
advancement (mechanical reproduction)
• decline of aura, but raise of mediated reality
• optimistic account of technology (for wider
population)
• politics of art and mass media

20. What is the main difference between
Benjamin’s view of mass media and
Adorno’s criticism?

22. Marshal McLuhan
(1911-1980)
• first Medium theorist
• comments on societal
impacts of mass media
(in particular TV)
• becomes a celebrity in
60ies
Annie Hall (1977) by Woody Allen

23. Key concepts in McLuhan’s work
• media and mode of communication
determine the nature of
cultures/societies
• real impact of media technologies is not
its content but their material presence,
networks of production and consumption
they create
• media is an extension of our sensory
system (ear/mouth – radio; eye – photography)

24. • Acoustic or Preliterate cultures/societies
human mouth and ear transmitters/receivers
direct (human) communication
• Literate cultures
– phonetic writing as first medium because it translates oral
communication into written artefact
– printing gives raise to first mass audience
• Visual cultures/societies
– Ultimate Medium – Television
– transforms mass audience into ‘electric communion’
modes of communication determine cultures

25. ‘global village’
• electronic technology is directly linked to our
sensory system
• television brings (earlier fragmented senses
back together, i.e. unites visual & acoustic)
• expansion of electronic media (TV) will lead
to inclusion of all in ‘global village’
Criticism of McLuhan’s ideas?
media determinism

26. from McLuhan's optimistic account of media
to Borstin’s pseudo-events and
Baudrillard’s hyperreality

27. Daniel Borstin: Pseudo-events
emergence of ‘pseudo-events’
• not spontaneous, but planned (press conference,
staged interview)
• produced, in order to be reported, or
reproduced
• Its relations to reality is unclear (for example:
human interest stories - evolve around stories, motivations
and physiological contexts of the actors involved in a pseudo
event; The actual substantive significance of the event is not
reported.
• essentially tautological phenomenon
– staged spontaneity (news programs)
(Borstin, 1961)

28. How do pseudo-events influence
media coverage of politics/
elections/conflicts/wars?

29. Gay Debord
(1967)
• visual media produce
vivid (true-like) but
essentially false images
of life
• the Situationists
(movement)

30. Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007)
• influenced by Situationists and
European Marxism
• early criticism (political economy
and semiotics): symbolic value of
commodity
• in 1980s moved to critique of
mediation and mass communication

31. hyperreality
• in technologically advanced postmodern
societies human consciousness is unable to
distinguish between “reality” from a
simulation of reality
• media shape/alter/produce and reproduce
events & experiences
• hyperreality: reality without ‘real’
• references without (real) referent

33.  critique of Technological
Determinism
 Social studies of Technology
 critical theory of technology
 Internet as a medium

34. Importance of Technology
structuring factor
enabling and limiting agency

35. Technological Determinism
• the common view on technology in politics,
economics, popular discourse (partially in
academia as well)
• roots of technological determinism
– post-enlightenment understanding of science, as
being objective and value-free, based on rationality
and discovered by experts

36. Two main assumptions in technological
determinism
1. technology develops autonomously, according to its
inner logic; its development path is linear and
irreversible, from simple to complex configurations
(technological innovations are not created but
‘discovered’ by experts)
2. society has to adapt to the ‘imperatives’ of
technology (determination by base)

37. Positive and negative accounts on impact of
technology on society
pessimist determinism
• technology fundamentally
transforms our lives, rips it from its
true essence
• human beings can no more
relate to own social world in its
true essence, - technology
“reveals” the world to us
• solutions: retreat, negation
positivist determinism
•an uncritical embrasure of
technocracy and unchallengeable
belief in technical progress as an
“exogenous force influencing
society”
•technological progress will
eliminate social problems/
inequalities/diseases etc.

38. Criticism of technological determinism
• positivist and pessimistic determination
• depolitisation of technology
• technology is not neutral and value-free
• its production and usage takes place in the
social context
• there is not only one but multiple ‘solutions’
possible
• Where is Agency?

39. Empirical rejection of technological
determinism
• Social Studies of technologies (UK, Netherlands, Europe)
• Main argument:
– Development of technology is socially contingent
process; Relevant groups negotiate interpretative
flexibility of technologies according to their values.
Development of technology may lead to closure,
when standard design emerges and/or is locked-in.
• classic example bicycle (Bijker, 1987)

40. Empirical rejection of technological
determinism

41. Contribution from SST
• development of technology is socially contingent
• `black-box' of technology has been opened
• socio-economic patterns embedded in both the
content of technologies and the processes of
innovation shape its development
• Critical question:
– If development of technology is socially contingent,
which social groups and/or what forces drive this
process? Where is agency of public/users in this
process?

42. Critical Theory of Technology

43. the Critical Theory of Technology
(Andrew Feenberg)
• It adds political and normative dimension to social
shaping of technology
• Recognizes power as well as social contingency of
technology
• Aims at Democratization of technology (its design,
development and usage)
• technical code – “a technical code is a realization of an
interest or ideology in a technically coherent solution to
a problem”; It is a criterion to select between alternative
feasible technical designs (e.g. efficiency, safety, health,
profit, etc.) (Feenberg, 2002).

44. example of creative appropriation (Feenberg)
• early 80es a Minitel
telephone/computer was
distributed to consumers for free;
enabled them to view
weather/railway information &
news bulletins)
•however users hacked into the
system (which allowed message
posting) and started to use it for
interpersonal, group communication
•creative appropriation of
technology by users creates new
uses of technology

45. “supermedium”?

46. internet as a medium
• platform and carrier of cross-media texts/content
• a new medium in itself
– Hypertext
– new genres? e.g. web (interactive) documentaries
– software and open architecture
• as a structure enabling/constraining agency
• a site of social struggle
• future scenarios: two models of Internet/ community and
commercial model (Feenberg)

47. recent and forthcoming changes
Media in the pocket?

48. Augmented reality?

49. 3D printing: creating objects

50. Social Consequences of New Media?
• change in perception of
time/space
• hypertext undermines our ability
to careful deliberation
• new media make us lose any sense
of unmediated experience
• McThinking?
• Generation Me?
• Wisdom or stupidity of crowds?

51. BIG data: surveillance and privacy

52. how does design of new media technologies
limit/enable agency?

53. who ‘owns’/controls/regulates the global
network?
P2P vs. client-server

54. Tug-of-War
• between technical capabilities of new media and
social forces (economic, political, public
interests)
• push and pull
– commercial interests
– user habits/interests
– government regulations

55. Conclusion
• Medium and its technological
characteristics effect the message
• Development of medium theory and
critique of technology
• Development of technology is socially
contingent
• Technology is not value free and neutral
• It enables/limits agency

57. To prepare the lecture following sources were used:
Walter Benjamin (1935) “
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Taylor and Harris (2008): Critical Theories of Mass Media
Andrew Feenberg (2002) Transforming Technology: A
critical theory revisited
Geert Lovink (2012) Networks Without Cause: A Critique of
Social Media