MEDIA + COMMUNICATION

The introductory chapters of Paddy Scannell’s “Media and Communications” centre on an analysis of ‘The Masses’ -- combining research into media and cultural studies alongside the formative development of critical social theory.

Scannell addresses the formation of an inter-textual culture and draws comparisons between the understandings of the production process and the final product (primarily investigating the work of Lazarsfeld, Adorno and Merton).

In the early days of researching the masses, there was a burgeoning reliance on practical realisation and manifestations between media and its actuality. Little research was conducted into mediated communication as psychological and sociological perspectives took centre stage (pg: 10). However, in Colombia University momentum began to pick up research began to surface considering the ‘new media of mass consumption’ (‘new’, of course at the time).

Lazarsfeld framed sociology as an empirical social science to re-interpret data, revealing social and commercial information. Thus ignited the practice of using ethnographic statistical observation and to measure sociological input.

Feeling that administrative research was academic work in the service of external public or private agencies, Lazarsfeld set out collecting and analysing information on the attitudes and responses to mass media (radio, print and film). This was measured in composition by age, sex and income and their preferences (likes and dislikes) – giving a broad and detailed understanding on the types of consumers they were engaging with. This ultimately provided agencies with the tools (informational) to strategies their product production and marketing practices.

The Lazarsfeld-Stanton program analyzer was developed to discover how audiences responded to what they were listening on a micro (moment to moment) and macro (overall) response level. Their device (called ‘Little Annie’ at CBS) recorded and tabulated audience reactions. The machine could profile changing audience reactions and responses to particular content, this lucrative device provided the agencies with insightful information gathered by the measurement from the audience – directing them to adjust aspect of their content to comply with audience’s desires and expectations.

Lazarsfeld’s research is not about the mass media as a singular critical entity (economic motivation, political regulation, organisation or production means) the focus is entirely based on the audience. New cultural industries still prioritise the immediate relationship between performers, performance and audiences. However, a growing dependency on producers, product and consumers are evident in current mass media events (like simulcast opera): there is no direct immediate link between what were later to be called the moments of encoding (production) and decoding consumption (pg: 22).

Scannell’s second chapter voices the concerns of mass culture; he particularly focuses on issues pertaining to: authorship, production, the rationality and reification of cultural institutions and their socio-economic organisation. This chapter delves into how the advancement of critical social research has impacted on the masses. According to Horkheimer, the masses should not be considered as ‘one entity’ instead they should be considered in their socio-historic process in relation to social and economic mechanisms that produce and perpetuate the masses.

The technical efficiency of contemporary cultural institutions operates on economic and medial apparatus that are regulated and governed by public and privet funding bodies – institution’s (like the ROH) content still rely heavily on understanding their audience demography and catering to these needs whilst attempting to balance the output of their artistic integrity and educational incentives (each ‘Live’ season will see a diversified programme: new and old productions, ‘popular’ operas, new commissioned works and quite often an obscure or controversial work (something that distinguishes their programme). 

Screen shot of BP Big Screen of Don Giovanni

To be continued…

 Autonomous Audiences 

If one takes Kant's concept of aesthetic ideas seriously, especially in Gautier's version of that argument, and holds that the absence of firm, definite, and rational ideas and meanings is the nature of both the creative process and the perception of artistic beauty, then the elimination of all narratives and the disappearance of all kinds of representations appears as the necessary step. Art must stop representing something, must stop meaning something in order to be what it is (art). (pg 664)

When art ceases to be recognised (and definable) in its aesthetic properties, one needs a "theory" which would contextualise and explain something as art, and the "artworld" in which such objects can function as art. (pg 672)

Yves Klein's exhibition entitled "Le Vide" (void), opened in 1958 in the Iris Clert gallery in Paris, is the action that reduces art to emptiness in a paradigmatic way. Its visitors were presented with an empty gallery; emptiness or "nothing" (apart from freshly painted white walls of the gallery) was all that was exhibited. Art appears here as being liberated not only from mimesis, formal elements of visual art, material objects or the compelling presence of the artist; the "pure" and "real" nature of art appears as nothing, signifying the final stage of the vanishing acts. The absence, emptiness, and/ or nothingNess that are derived from Klein's project can probably be interpreted as disclosing the real nature of (autonomous) art, as the aesthetic argument aspired to establish it. "Nothing becomes the final stage and a complete self-realisation of art as an autonomous phenomenon. (pg 671)


Source Džalto, Davor. "Art: A Brief History of Absence." Filozofija i društvo 26 (2015).