Intro to Media Studies
“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies…Education is a system of imposed ignorance” — Noam Chomsky
week 1 — Introduction
April 4: Syllabus
April 6: Ideology, Communication, and Rhetoric
Read: Louis Althusser’s “Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses” (1970)
week 2 — Ideology, Technology, & the Political-Economy of Mass Media
April 11: Reproducing the Conditions of Production
Read: Louis Althusser’s “Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses” (1970)
Read: Laurie Penny’s “Life-Hacks of the Poor and Aimless: On negotiating the false idols of neoliberal self-care” (2016; wellness as ideology)
April 13: “Attack All Uses of Power…you should always stick with the underdog” — Chomsky
Screen: Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent (1992)
“Respect Strength, Never Power” — Arundhati Roy
week 3 — Media as Industry
April 18: How does the inequality of wealth and power effect mass-media interests and choices?
Read: Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s The Propaganda Model (1988)
April 20: The Art of Branding (PAPER 1 DUE)
Screen: Naomi Klein’s No Logo (1999)
In Class Discussions Using: The Joneses (2009); FOX’s ‘Empire’ and Pepsi (2015)
week 4 — ‘Capital’ Creates More Capital, The Logic of the Media Industrial Complex
April 25: Understanding the Profit Motive
Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)
April 27: Disaster Capitalism, Hip Hop, & the Side Effects of Trickle Down Economic Theories
Screen: Michael Winterbottom’s The Shock Doctrine (2009; written by Naomi Klein)
Can you shock from the bottom up?
Screen: Rihanna’s “#BBHMM” (2015) and M.I.A.s’s “Born Free” (2010)
week 5 — Corporate Persons and Citizens
May 2: Is active participation possible?
Read: Stuart Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding Model” (1973)
May 4: Corporations are persons without a body or a soul…
Screen: The Corporation
- MARKETING
- CORPORATE IMPERIALISM & BRANDING
- GENERAL ELECTRIC, PATENTING LIFE, & THE BIRTH OF DISTRACTION JOURNALISM
week 6 — Midterm
May 9: Midterm Review
May 11: Midterm
week 7 — Power and Technology
May 16: “permanent visibility”
May 18: Surveillance + Unverifiable Power
Continue Reading: Michel Foucault. “Panopticism.” In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. pp. 195–228.
week 8 — Digital Technology and Government
May 23:
Read: Leo Marx. “The Idea of ‘Technology’ and Postmodern Pessimism.” In Does Technology Drive History? ed. Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx (Cambridge, Mass., 1994), 238–57.
May 25:
Read: Leo Marx. “Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept.” Technology and Culture, Volume 51, Number 3 (2010): 561–577.
week 9 — Media and Democracy
May 30: The Internet (Paper 2 Due)
Guest Speaker, Nadya Agrawal. Founder of Kajal Magazine
- Creating content geared towards minority communities in 2017
Robert McChesney “Will the Internet Set Us Free?”
June 1: Being in the Industry
Robert McChesney “The New Theology of the First Amendment: Class Privilege Over Democracy” Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (2015 edition)
Guest Speaker, Vanessa Carlisle. Author, Radio Host, and Scholar.
- Free Speech and Radio Culture after Trump
week 10 — Conclusions
STUDENT PODCASTS
- Stuart Hall and Satire (Joshua King, James Polis, Shahil Rizvi, Spiro Kavvathas)
- Criticism of ‘13 Reasons Why’ (Allison Moua, Yoselin Zavala Lopez, Jessica Calgav, Harkirat K. Mundi, Vanessa Ramirez Jasso)
