Week 1 - Media and the Social World (Jan 8 & 10)

Introduction to the course - Jan 8 (T)

• The who, what, where, when, and why of this course

Media and the Social World - Jan 10 (TH)
Readings for today:

• The second half of Media/Society (MS) Chap. 1, beginning with the section "Mass Media in Socialization"

Week 2 - Media Ownership and Economics (Jan 15 & 17)

Media Ownership & Economics  - Jan 15 (T)

Readings for today:

• MS pp. 31-54

* Notes for the entire unit on media economics (including ownership, markets, and profits) are accessible HERE.  Today we will cover:

• Individuals vs. Corporations
• For-Profit vs. Nonprofit
• Issues in Profitmaking

For further reading and research: 

• History of the corporation ("Birth" and "Legal Person") from award-winning documentary film, The Corporation. 
• Media Consolidation: The Illusion of Choice (infographic)
• Ultra-Concentrated Media Ownership (infographic)
• Robert McChesney, "Understanding the Media Reform Movement," International Journal of Communication, Vol. 2., 2009, pp. 47-53.

Media Markets & Profit - Jan 17 (TH)

Readings for today:

• MS pp. 54-70

See link to notes above.  Today we will cover: 

• Big Media Corporations: Their Motivations
• How Big Media Corporations Maximize Their Profits 
• Media Markets
• Follow the Money: Media Products

Week 3 - Advertising and Broadcast Economics (Jan 22 & 24)

Advertising and Culture - Jan 22

Readings for today: 

• Carrie McLaren, "The Ad Industry's Battle Against the Consumer Movement of the 1930s: An Interview with Inger Stole," Stay Free! #18.  Click HERE for some helpful questions to guide you with the article.
• Naomi Klein, "New Branded World" excerpt from No Logo (available on our course ANGEL website)

Click HERE for notes.  Today we will cover: 

• Advertising: Not Simply a Public Service
• Why Advertising is not Free
• Following the Money in Advertising
• Why Corporations Think Synergy is Cool
• Effects of Synergy on Media Content

For further reading and research:

• Stay Free! #18: Advertising and the End of History
• The Persuaders (film)
• "Apple Product Placements in TV and Movies," Business Insider
• Marmola advertisement, 1935  (and here)
• "Advertising: Hershey Sees a Need," Time Magazine,  1964.
• A game that tests your brand recognition:  "How Consumer Brainwashed Are You?," Salon.com, Dec 4, 2012. 

The Commodity Audience & Making $ on Content - Jan 24

For today:

• Eileen Meehan, “Audience Commodity” (on ANGEL)
• Derek Thompson, "Why NBC Doesn't Care That You Want to Watch the Olympics Live on TV," The Atlantic, July 30, 2012.

You can access notes HERE.  Today we will cover: 

• What's Different About Broadcast Audiences
• Broadcast Economics
• The Commodity Audience
• Forced Choice vs. Free Choice
• Syndication: Big Bucks in Broadcasting
• Majors and Independents
• Displacement of Risk

For further reading and research:

• Carrie McLaren, "How to Tell You're a Details Reader," Escandalo: The Matador Records Newsletter #6, May 1997.

Week 4 - IP and Alternative Media (Jan 29 & 31)

Making $ on Content and Intellectual Property - Jan 29

For today:

• Quiz #1 (on Weeks 2 & 3)
• Jay Epstein, "Hollywood's Reality: TV," Adweek, Aug 8, 2011.
• Interview with Chuck D and Hank Shocklee, "How Copyright Law Changed Hip Hop," (2004)
• Kembrew McLeod, "Consumption and Intellectual Property," The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. George Ritzer (2006).

Outlines for notes: 

• Intellectual Property on a Stick
• Digital Media and Intellectual Property Issues

For further reading and research:

• Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property (film)
• Aaron Swartz, "Who Writes Wikipedia?"
• Lawrence Lessig on Free Culture (2002)
• Lawrence Lessig's last speech on Free Culture (2008)
• World Intellectual Property Organization 
• "They Say That I Stole This" - Audio recording of a 2010 conversation between Girl Talk, Hank Shocklee, and Duke Law Professor, James Boyle.  Recorded and broadcasted via National Public Radio's On the Media show.  A transcript of the conversation is here.
• Steve Albini, “The Problem with Music," originally published in Maximum RocknRoll, April 1992. 

Alternative Media - Jan 31

For today:

• Read Zack Furness, "Alternative Media: The Art of Rebellion," in Media Literacy: A Reader, eds. Donaldo Macedo and Shirley Steinberg (Peter Lang, 2007), pp. 189-196.

Outlines for notes: 

• Alternative Media and D.I.Y
• Alternative Entertainment
• Other Alternatives

For further reading & research:

• IWW Poster Print from 1911 (radical politics)
• Black Panther image (radical politics)
• Iconoclast (underground press)
• Pirate Radio History (radio...duh)
• Zines (self-publishing) & POC Zine Project tour in Pgh
• Prometheus Radio Project (community-based, low power radio)
• Media Education Foundation (media literacy and education)
• Lakota Media Project (community media production)
• Youth Advocacy Media Project at Carlow University (community media)
• Democracy Now! (news)
• The Listening Post (news analysis)
• Dischord Records (pioneering independent US punk label)

Week 5 - Ideology (Feb 5 & 7)

Ideology - Feb 5

Readings for today:

• PAPER #1 Due Today
• MS Chapter 5, Sections 1-3 & last two sections on advertising

Outlines for notes: 

• Where Ideology Comes From
• Characteristics of Ideology Today

Ideology, Part II - Feb 7
Readings for today:

• MS Chap 5 - remaining sections
• In-class screening of the documentary, Control Room. You can read more about the film, as well as Lt. Josh Rushing who was featured in the film and later became a journalist with the Al Jazeera English news network. 

For further reading and research:

• Al Jazeera English

Week 6 - No Class (Feb 12 & 14)

No class due to sick professor

Week 7 - Representation & Inequality (Feb 19 & 21)

Representation & Inequality - Feb 19

For today:

• Read the first half of MS Chap 6

For further reading & research:

• Watch Marlon Riggs' excellent documentary on the history of African American representation in US pop culture:  Ethnic Notions.  You can also watch Riggs' film, Color Adjustment, which focuses specifically on African American representation on television (it's a bit dated in terms of the examples, but is nonetheless an important document).  Both films can be streamed online via PSU Library. 
• "Sports Illustrated Uses People of Color as Props in Swimsuit Issue," Salon, Feb 15, 2013. 
• Racialicious
• Bitch Magazine
• Feministing
• In Media Res
• We Are Respectable Negroes
• Native Appropriations

Representation & Inequality (Cont.) - Feb 21

For today:

• Finish MS chap 6
• Jack Shaheen, "Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 588 (2003): 171-193.
• Watch Reel Bad Arabs in class.

For further reading & research:

• Matt Duss, "Hollywood of Hate," Salon, Sept 12, 2012.
• Eric Repphun, "Avatar as European Orientalist Fantasy," The Dunedin School (blog), Dec 24, 2009.
• Wajahat Ali, "Sex and the City 2's Stunning Muslim Cliches," Salon, May 26, 2010.
• Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Race, RACE-The Power of an Illusion, PBS.com. 

Week 8 - Media Conventions (Feb 26 & 28)

Narrative in Media - Feb 26
Readings for today: 

• Branston and Stafford (on ANGEL)

In-class notes: 

• Lecture on Narrative

For further reading & research:

• Will Wright, "The Hero in Popular Stories" (on ANGEL)

Film Language - Feb 28
For today:

• Quiz #2 (on Representation & Media Conventions - readings from Weeks 7 & 8)
• Debra Seagal, "Tales from the Cutting Room Floor," Harper's, Nov 1993.
• "Aspects Of Mise-en-scene - Film Art: An Introduction By David Bordwell And Kristin Thompson." *This reading will not be on today's quiz, but I expect you to read it. 

For further reading and research:

• Matthias Stork, "Chaos Cinema" Press Play, 2011 (video essay).
• Except on semiotics and representation from Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies.
• Zack's Lecture on Semiotics

Week 9 - NO CLASS (March 5 & 7)

NO CLASS THIS WEEK FOR SPRING BREAK

Week 10 - News & PR (March 12 & 14)

News - March 12

Readings for today:

• Chapter 4  (*skip the section on the 'hit' system)
• Journalist Amy Goodman on the role that media should play in society.

Lecture notes:

• News Powerpoint Slides (the entire unit of notes)

For further reading & research:

• "The Case of the US vs. Bradley Manning," The Listening Post, Al Jazeera.
• Nas, "Sly Fox"
• Glenn Greenwald, "CNN and the business of state-sponsored TV news," The Guardian (UK), Sept 4, 2012.
• "Kardashian's Get 40 Times More News Coverage than Climate Change," Media Matters, June 27, 2012.
• Glenn Greenwald discussing the problem of news 'objectivity' on Democracy Now! and also in  The Guardian: "Martha Raddatz and the Faux Objectivity of Journalists."
• David Gutman, "Objectivity Does Not Mean Neutrality: The Danger of False Equivalency," Common Dreams, October 25, 2012.

PR & News - March 14

For today:

• Jon Bailes, "PR, Social Control and Revolt: An Interview with Stuart Ewen," State of Nature, Winter 2009.
• Quiz #3 on news and PR (this week's readings)

For further reading & research:

• Anna Lappé, "Selfish Giving: How Pepsi and Coke are the Champs of Faux Charity," Alternet, April 1, 2013.
• Manufacturing Consent (film)
• Century of the Self, part 1 of 4

Lecture Notes:

• PR Lecture notes

Week 11 - Media and Politics (March 19 & 21)

Media Influence & The Political World - March 19

For class:

• Chapter 7 in M/S (read through 'Media and Social Movements on p. 237)

For further reading and research:

• Amy Goodman on the corporate media and war, from the 2013 National Conference for Media Reform.

Politics & Media - March 21

• Chapter 7 in M/S (finish the chapter)
• Media & Social Movements

Links for class:

• Media and Social Movements (powerpoint)
• The Listening Post "Occupy Wall Street Media Blackout," Al Jazeera.
• Douglas Rushkoff on Occupy.
• "Occupy Wall Street Media Blackout," Nation of Change.
• "Occupy Wall Street: A Frenzy That Failed," New York Times.
• http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/09/media-non-coverage-occupy-wall-street-gets-lots-media-coverage/43013/

For further reading and research:

• Murray Foreman, "Conscious Hip-Hop, Change, and the Obama Era," American Studies Journal, No 54 (2010).
• Anti-Defemation League, "Neo-Nazi Hate Music: A Guide."
• Political issues that don't make news in the US: Military using bombs containing depleted Uranium (toxic waste) and white phosphorus (illegal under UN Conventions)

Week 12 - Audiences (March 26 & 28)

Audiences - March 26



Readings for today:

• Chapter 8 in M/S (read through 'Structure and Interpretive Constraints')

Audiences & Convergence Culture - March 28

Readings for today:

• Quiz #4 (on Chap 7) - Quiz moved to today due to prof illness
• Finish Chapter 8
• Henry Jenkins' overview of 'convergence culture'

For further reading & research:

• Dan Sinker's use of Twitter as political satire theatre:  http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/376731/march-08-2011/dan-sinker

Week 13 - Thinking About Media Tech (April 2 & 4)

Thinking About Media Technologies  - April 2

For today:

• Chapter 9 in M/S (read through 'Social Construction of Technologies')

More on Media Technologies  - April 4

• Douglas Rushkoff, "Why I'm Quitting Facebook," CNN.com, February 25, 2013.
• Quiz #5 (on Chap 8, the Jenkins essay, and notes from April 2)

Week 14 - Media Regulation (April 9 & 11)

Media Regulation History  - April 9

Readings for today:

• Chapter 3 in M/S through pg. 90.

Notes for today:

• Zack's lecture notes on media regulation and policy.  *NOTE - These do not cover all the material in Chapter 3.

More on Media Regulation - April 11

For today:

• Bill Moyers, "Why US Internet Access is Slow, Costly and Unfair," Alternet, 9 Feb 2013.
• Questions: 1) Main points raised in the Moyers' interview?  2) What kinds of media regulation do you think are necessary or unnecessary, and why?  

For further reading & research:

• "Privacy Protections Booted from CISPA Data-Sharing Bill," CNET News, April 11, 2013.
• Electronic Frontier Foundations' guide to truth vs. myth on CISPA
• 2013 National Conference for Media Reform
• Internet Speed in US Lags Behind Many Countries

Week 15 - Media & Globalization (April 16 & 18)

Media and Globalization - April 16

Readings for today:

• Chapter 10 (through 'cultural imperialism')

Media and Globalization Cont. - April 18

Readings for today:

• Finish Chapter 10
• Quiz #6 (on Weeks 14 & 15)

Week 16 - Review & Final Exam (April 23 & 25)

Final Exam Review - April 23
For today:

• Bring questions you have on the material.  I'm happy to answer any and all questions, but this will not simply be an overview of what you need to know for the test.
• FINAL EXAM REVIEW SHEET was emailed to everyone today (also posted HERE).

FINAL EXAM (Last Day of Class) - April 25

• Final Exam today!