MGC3/S14 Media, Economy, Power: Altered Contexts, Persistent Questions

• Intensive course 17.05. - 21.05.2010, every day 10-14.
• Location: Unioninkatu 37, seminar room 4.

The course is open to master's level students (max 30) of the department of communication. Registration in Weboodi: 18.2.- 24.2.2010.

Objectives

The emergence of modern mass media (recorded sound, film, radio, the telephone, photographic illustrations in newspapers and magazines) in the period 1880-1920 coincided with three major developments – the consolidation of industrial capitalism and the shift in the new system’s centre of gravity from Europe to the USA, the shift from empires to nation states as the key unit of political organisation, and the extension of popular participation in the political process, Media and communications system were central to these developments , as essential infrastructural supports, as the key site for producing public cultures, and as a profound intervention in everyday life.

From the outset commentators argued about how these key communicative potentials should be organised, a debate that came to centre on the relations between commercial activity ,public intervention, and the common good ,generating a series of questions and challenges for analysis and policy. These questions have persisted down to the present, but over the last three decades the context in which they now being addressed has altered in significant ways as a result of three major currents of change- digitalisation, marketisation, and globalisation.

This course sets out to explore how these shifts are impacting on the organisation of media and communication ,giving new relevance to long standing questions, and introducing new formations , potentials and challenges

Content

The ten two hour sessions that comprise the course will each be divided into - a lecture introducing the topic - a group discussion based on assigned key readings which explore particular aspects of the topic in more detail or considers a relevant case study

Course Outline:

The course is divided into four blocks

Block 1 Contexts: Continuity and Change

• Lecture 1 Capital, the State , and Communications- key questions, key responses Seminar Learning from history
• Lecture 2 Currents of Change: Digitalisation, Marketisation, Globalization Seminar Change in contemporary China

Block 2 Communication Capital and Commerce

• Lecture 3 Markets and Corporations : Structures and Strategies Seminar Questions of synergy: Plurality v diversity?
• Lecture 4 Private Interests and Public Cultures: Owner Power Seminar Manuel Castells on Networked Power
• Lecture 5 Promotion and Expression: Advertising and Commercial Censorship Seminar Debating product placement.

Block 3 Public and States

• Lecture 6 The Controlling State : Questions of Security and Surveillance Seminar Responses to Terror
• Lecture 7 The Politics of Regulation Seminar Defining the ‘Public Interest’
• Lecture 8 The Politics of Subsidy and Public Goods Seminar Is there still a case for Public Service Broadcasting?

Block 4 Digital Networks and Popular Participation

• Lecture 9 The Internet and the Idea of the Public Sphere Seminar Habermas on line ?
• Lecture 10 Digital Gift Economies Seminar Debating ‘Convergence Culture’

Grading

The course will be assessed by a single essay to be based on one of the seminar topics.