Full Description
In the early part of the 20th century, state and corporate propagandists used the mass media to promote the valor and rightness of ascending U.S. hegemony on the global stage. Critics who challenged these practices of mass persuasion were quickly discredited by the emergent field of communication research - a field explicitly attempting to measure and thereby improve the efficacy of media messages.
Three strains of critical cultural and media theory were especially engaged with the continued critique of the role of commodified, industrially produced, mass distributed culture- the Cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School, the Cultural Materialism and active audiences of Cultural Studies, and Critical Political Economy of Communication. This book examines these three paradigms, illustrating the major tensions and points of agreement between them, particularly in relation to the dominant paradigms of administrative social science research and media ecology within communication and media studies more broadly.
From the perspective of the emergent cultural environment, Hegemony, American Mass Media and Cultural Studies argues that the original points of disagreement between these paradigms appear less contradictory than before. In doing so it offers a new theoretical toolkit for those seeking to understand the current struggles for a more just, more democratic media, culture, and society.
Contents
1. Valorizing Hegemony: American Mass Media, Intellectual Property, and the Economic Value of the Ideological State Apparatuses / 2. A Slightly Deeper Time of the Media: Culture and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle for Hegemony / 3. When Shakespeare Became Black(face) and Christmas Became White: Race, Class, and Valorization before the Commodification of Consciousness / 4. Administration and/of Culture: The Incorporation of Media Culture and the Critique of the Frankfurt School and Political Economy of Communication / 5. The Work of Meaning and the Meaning of Work: Cultural Studies and the Discovery of Audience Labor / 6. Culture Industry 2.0: Properties of Cultural Production and the Value of Commodified Sociality
