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Media Crit Spr2010 Session27

Thinking Systematically About Media

Hal Himmelstein has said that the structure of a TVR major at Brooklyn College is:
- An introduction to theory
- A deep experience in production
- A integrating capstone experience using theory
  - This course is that capstone
It is hoped that you come out of this course:
- Having learned something of the theory of media criticism
- Having integrated your production experience in a new way
- Having learned to write about it
But media criticism is just a small corner of media theory and, more generally, communication theory
- I encourage you to explore more of it
- Good overviews can be found in the work of:
  - Denis ?McQuail
  - Steven Littlejohn
  - and many others
And the methods of media criticism are just a small corner of media analysis
- We have not considered:
  - Audience Demographics
  - Survey Research Methods
  - Rigorous Methods of Audience Observation and Measurement
  - Experimental Methods
  - Archival Data Methods
  - or any method that entails statistical analysis
- Again, I encourage you to explore more of it
Today I want to take you a little deeper into media analysis and my current research program
- I've hinted at it before
- And referenced a number of the useful starting points on my journey
I'm trying to "operationalize" the characteristics of media that are:
- the subject of McLuhan's metaphors
- the observations of Innis, Ong, Postman, and many others
I have identified hundreds of them
- within families that are described by my model and the methods of this course:
  - Participants
    - Creators
    - Consumers
    - Middleman
  - who exercise
    - Power
      - Control of Medium
      - Control of Content
    - Process
      - Ritual
      - Structure
  - while producing and performing content
  - with Media
    - that enable language
      - through interface technologies
      - that conform to human modalities
    - genre that customize the medium to audiences
    - and enable messages to span
      - time
      - space
      - scale
    - using technologies that
      - store messages for later retrieval
      - channel messages from one place to another
      - and market both the medium and the messages
For me a course like this is an opportunity to explore the structure and process of media
- I hope you caught some of that too
- Because in the end, it isn't the answers that entertain us. Its the questions.

-- Last edited May 19, 2010

Unless otherwise noted, the contents of this page were written by participants on the Media Space Wiki, operated by Davis Foulger, and should be cited accordingly. For example (APA):
Foulger, D. and other participants. (May 19, 2010). Media Crit Spr2010 Session27. MediaSpaceWiki. Retrieved on from http://evolutionarymedia.com/wiki.htm?MediaCritSpr2010Session27.