Turnitin and AssignIT

Some of you have been having troubles with Turnitin not letting you access the report for the final assignment. If that's the case, let me know via email and I'll check it myself later on.

Also, AssignIT seems to be rather slow in turning itself on. If you're trying to submit early or it has some sort of issue, email your final assignment to me directly at ianto.ware@unisa.edu.au

Some Recommended Readings for the Final Assignment

Obviously I’m not going to do your research for you or tell you exactly what you should read for each question. But below is a selection of texts I think you’ll find useful and a brief overview. You’ll still need to do research specific to your topic but these are good starting points.

Theodor Adorno
There’s a lot of stuff by Adorno out there and he’s one of those canonical authors you can cite from even though he’s pretty old. If you can find the Adorno reader, take a look at chapter 13 “Culture Industry Revisited”, particularly page 233 where he complains about how the mass media are making people stupid. He’s also got an essay with Max Horkheimer called ‘The Culture Industry as Mass Deception” in Rivkin and Ryan’s ‘Literary Theory: An Anthology’ which is worth looking up.

The Long Tail, Chris Anderson, 2006
We’ve talked about this a lot in the tutes. It’s not really an academic text, but Anderson’s theory of The Long Tail is really important and has had a huge impact.

The Media and Communications in Australia, Stuart Cunningham and Graeme Turner, 2002
This is a little old now but it has some big name theorists and useful sections. Part Two has some overviews of major theoretical approaches to understanding contemporary media. In the last two sections there’s some stuff on new media and predictions about the future of professional journalism and television etc.

Dream, Stephen Duncombe, 2007
Duncombe’s an aging activist, most renowned for his attempts to bridge the gap between academia and punk. This book is about activism and participatory culture in the 21st century. Chapter five is probably the most useful, particularly if you’re doing the question 1 or 4, both looking at the cultural impact of Web 2.0

The Cultural Resistance Reader, Stephen Duncombe, 2002
This is a collection of major cultural theory around the notion of political and social activism. Part seven and eight include readings by Adorno, Richard Hoggart and a few other people I’ve talked about in tutes – a good way to get some ‘foundational’ theory into your final assignment. Most of the readings in this book are short, easy to read excerpts from major thinkers.

Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers and Emo, Andy Greenwald, 2003
This is getting a little old now, and I’m not sure ‘Emo’ is still a term people use, let alone use in the way they used to. And this isn’t an academic text. But it is one of the best overviews of the impact of Web 2.0 and a perfect practical illustration of Chris Anderson’s notion of the long tail applied to suburban kids and what we’d call ‘subcultural literacy practices’ (which basically just means buying certain records, books, magazines, clothes etc etc). I’d say focus on the first part of Part Two, which looks at the business model of Vagrant Records – one of the first labels to really succeed in a post-digital environment, and Part Four, which looks at angsty teenagers and their use of things like LiveJournal. There’s also some stuff on one of the first really big social networking sites, MakeOutClub.

Silencing Dissent, Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison, 2007
Written specifically to critique the Howard government prior to the last election, there’s some pretty overt political agendas on display here. But its got some good stuff on how the Australian government shapes and controls public debate through policies on the media. Have a look at chapter six, ‘The Media’, by Helen Ester.

Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins, 2006
This is one of the most influential books of the last few years, looking at the way the mass media has reacted to the Long Tail and how perceptions of the audience have changed. Henry Jenkins is probably the biggest name in US media studies right now and worth looking up.

Marshall McLuhan
This is an author, not a single text. He’s got a few major books. Look for the Gutenberg Galaxy. That’s probably the major one. McLuhan more or less founded media studies in the United States back in the sixties and was largely forgotten by the mid-eighties, but his work has been rediscovered over the past few years. His approach focuses on mediums and, more particularly, how new and digital mediums will impact on what people make and how people communicate. US media studies tends to focus much more on mediums, whereas UK or Birmingham School theory tends to focus more on a Marxist theories which are more about how media impacts upon culture. McLuhan is one of those ‘big name’ or canonical theorists you can quote from despite his work being pretty old.

Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte, 1995
Akin to McLuhan, I’d accept this as a historical source or as a text which influenced a lot of more recent theory. Negroponte’s book was one of the first things ever written on the internet by someone who knew a great deal about it. A lot of what he says hasn’t really stood up, partly because a couple of years later the dot.com boom kicked in. But it’s still an interesting source detailing the history of the internet.

Literary Theory: An Anthology, Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, 1998
This is old, but it used to be the standard reader for English Honours students at Adelaide University. It includes pretty much all the canonical thinkers in the fields of English, Media and Cultural Studies and as such it’s a fantastic starting point. Have a look through Part Ten, which includes the Adorno and Horkheimer reading on mass media and why it makes people dumb, Stuart Hall’s stuff on ideology, John Fiske’s essay on television culture and a bunch of other highly influential work.

The Content Makers, Margaret Simons, 2007
This is an overview of the Australian media industry, covering its changes and the impact of Web 2.0. There’s some useful stuff on the changing attitudes towards the concept of the ‘audience’ and a lot of general historical overview about how the Australian professional media works.

The Book is Dead, Sherman Young, 2007
Chapter 4 and 5, titled ‘Nobody Reads’ and ‘Everybody Writes’ are probably the most useful. This is a prediction about how content delivery mechanisms will change over the next ten years, with particular reference to the book. Young’s basic hypothesis is that the book as a physical object will lose some of its dominance as people start reading more online, and that will also change how people write and publish.

Uploading your draft assignment

A few people have said they're having issues uploading the draft assignment into Turnitin. To answer the common questions:

(1) No, I don't expect a full draft. While you do get marked on completing this portion of the course, all you need to do is log on and upload something - a 500 word draft or your last assignment. I won't be reading any drafts. I'll just be checking to see you've registered. The idea is to get you registered with Turnitin and give you a chance to practice using it. It's pretty simple to use, so don't worry too much.

(2) Turnitin doesn't produce the report immediately. It takes between 15 minutes and 24 hours. This is why you need to run your final assignment through Turnitin around the 18th of November.

(3) If Turnitin won't let you log on or won't let you upload, email me at: ianto.ware@unisa.edu.au

The Final Assignment

The final assignment is due on November 20th. It's 2500 words, not including the bibliography. You need to do the following:

(1) Submit a 'draft' of your assignment through TurnItIn (see the last post) on October 31st.
(2) Run the final version of your assignment through TurnItIn around the 18th of November.
(3) Submit the final version of the Assignment, with the TurnItIn report attached to it, through AssignIT on November 20th.

There's an online guide to this assignment at:
http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/learn/Learningconnection/?PATH=/Resources/la/Media+Literacies+(HUMS+1013)+-+Research+Essay+SP5-2009/&default=Welcome.htm
But keep in mind, that guide hasn't been updated recently. Follow the instructions in the course guide and in the tutes over anything you find at that URL.

Computer Room Tutorial

If you don't get to the computer room tutorial, you can do the following at home or in the library.

Computer Room Tutorial
Today’s tute is essentially an exercise in aggravating data entry. You’ll be doing three things:

(1) Logging in to TurnItIn. All you need to do with this today is login. Make sure you remember your password. We’ll go over the reason you’re doing this in next week’s tutorial.

(2) Doing the Student Evaluation of Teaching. This is an anonymous form giving me feedback on my teaching. The scores also affect my ability to get further tutoring work in the future. They are totally anonymous and, whilst I see your answers, I don’t see your name or any other identifying notes in the final report. I do value feedback on how I can teach this course better in the future.

(3) Doing the Course Evaluation Instrument. This is akin to the above, but the feedback is for the course coordinator (Jean) and lecturer (Kit). This is where you give feedback regarding things like the lectures, access to online course materials, the layout of the course information booklet etc.

(1) TurnItIn
(1) Go to your student email. You should have an email from TurnItIn. It will include your email address and a temporary password.
(2) Follow the prompts to login.
(3) Eventually you’ll get to a page that has “Assignment List” and “Your Portfolio” written up the top of it.
(4) There should be two ‘Assignments’ listed below. One will say “Final Assignment Media Literacies” and the other will say “Revision One”.
(5) On October 31st you need to upload a “Draft” of your Assignment. To do this, click on the little picture of the arrow next to ‘Revision One” and below ‘Your Portfolio”. Fill in the sections for your name and write your name plus the word ‘Draft’ under ‘Submission Title’. Then click “upload”.
(6) After uploading you’ll be redirected to a page that says “Submit paper”. Scroll down and click on ‘Submit’.
(7) In theory, at some point in the next 15 minutes to 24 hours you’ll get a report telling you whether you’ve plagiarised or not. It’ll appear as a little coloured line with a percent next to it. You need to log back in to TurnItIn to get this.
(8) For the final assignment, you need to follow all of the above steps, except submitting your final assignment under the “Final Assignment Media Literacies”.

(2) SET and (3) CEI
You should get an email asking you to answer and Student Evaluation of Teaching, or something similar. Follow the links.

Overview of the Course So Far

Let’s consider some examples of media and think about what the course has gone over so far. A couple of weeks ago we looked at a bunch of ads and asked a few questions:
What signs do you see?
What discourses (or themes) are evident?
What’s the story being told?
How does that relate to a particular ideology or hegemony?

So let’s really quickly look at an ad:


Now let’s look at another ad.


What happened here?
Chevy Tahoe hired some advertising company that had heard about ‘mash ups’ and put the material required to make an ad for them online, tried to go all Web 2.0 and get some ‘user generated content’. They put the footage online, the music and let people rearrange them and ad their own captions and sound tracks. They got a whole pile of these, most of which are now on YouTube.
This is emblematic of a shift in how people think about advertising, but also in how we think about media.

In The Sociology of Culture, Raymond Williams writes:

"…whatever purposes cultural practice may serve, its means of production are unarguably material. Indeed, instead of starting from the misleading contrast between ‘material’ and ‘cultural’, we have to define two areas for analysis: first, the relations between those material means and the social forms within which they are used… and, second, the relations between these material means and social forms and the specific (artistic) forms which are a manifest cultural production."

What does that mean? It means media is about signs and communication, but its also about how those signs reach the reader. What Chevy fails to recognise is that its not the 1950s, and media isn’t one-way anymore.

Let’s think about another example. On top of thinking about the signs and discourses, think about how those signs and discourses move from the producer (the publisher, writer, editor, etc) to the consumer (the reader).



The Gutenberg Bible
What made this revolutionary?



Let’s consider two other examples, both taken from Chris Anderson’s book ‘The Long Tail’.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtHadAigayc

Anderson cites these guys as having produced the fastest selling album of all time, with 2.4million copies in the first week, released in Jan 2000. They were put together by a music mogal called Lou Pearlman at Sony, but for their second album, No Strings Attached, they shifted to a subsidiary called Jive to get more street cred.

Anderson says these guys benefited from a particular media structure that controlled how media products reached an audience. He explains this at length in the Long Tail, but consider it in brief. Here's a picture of the Long Tail"



When this piece of music came out, it relied on retail outlets, radio and MTV to attract an audience. With limited space, and the necessity of a huge market to cover the cost of accessing that space, only the 'hits' were commercially viable. Guys like Pearlman knew how to work that structure and make hits.

According to Anderson, their success will never be matched because it’s no longer possible for record companies to control their audience in the same way. Anderson talks about the shift towards the ‘long tail’, whereby people buy more niche markets. He uses the example of The Lonely Island.

He says these guys are an example of people becoming successful not because they had a record company that knew how to run a good publicity campaign, but because they slowly built a grassroots reputation through things like YouTube. There’s some other famous examples of recent years.

MC Spandex, who got almost a million hits and world wide fame for a low budget parody music video clip:


Another ‘famous’ example is Tim and Eric. Only watch this if you’re feeling brave. These guys have a well established cult following, but as you can tell from the below clip they’d never fit into the old media structure:

What changes have happened to allow us to go from the boy bands of the late 90s and early 2000s, selling millions of copies, to things like The Lonely Island becoming popular?

Further Reading
The point is that mediums are as important as the meanings they produce. Some useful theory for looking at mediums:

Raymond Williams, The Sociology of Culture.
Hillel Schwartz, The Culture of the Copy.
Marshall McLuhan, The Essential McLuhan.
Andy Greenwald, Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers and Emo.
Tara Brabazon, From Revolution to Revelation.
Steven Roger Fischer, A History of Reading.
Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, A Social History of the Media.

Questions on Referencing and Annotated Bibliographies

In answer to some of the questions I’ve been receiving:

A General Overview of Annotated Bibliographies:
There’s an online guide to Annotated Bibliographies on the library website at:
http://www.unisa.edu.au/ltu/students/study/referencing/bibliography.asp

A Guide to Referencing Using Harvard
There’s a decent guide to both bibliographies and referencing in-text available as a PDF through the library. Do a title search through the library catalogue for “Referencing Using the Harvard Author-Date System” and you should be able to find it.

Citing a Report
Follow the example of the ‘Government Periodical’ at the bottom of page 20 in your course guide. Basically, cite the following:
-Either the editors, author or organisation that produced the report
-The year
-The title
-Any serial or volume numbers
-The publisher (which might be the same organisation you’re using for the author’s name)
-The place of publication.

How I Would Do The Second Assignment

STEP ONE:
Pick a Topic
Try to pick a topic you’ll be willing to stick with for the final assignment. The point is that this assignment helps you do the readings for the final one.

Let’s say I opted to go for the ‘make your own question’ option. The main goal of the course is to get you thinking about the power relationships inherent to the act of human communication. That’s what media is about. So I’ve chosen the topic:

“How has the rise of Web 2.0 affected how we understand ‘subculture’?”

The question is about how a trend in media has impacted upon how people interact, particularly people within smaller scale, more cohesive communities, particularly those with a sense of ‘resistant’ or ‘countercultural’ politics. Thus, it fits into the general aims of the course perfectly.

STEP TWO:
Research
You need to find eight sources relevant to your topic, as per page 14 of the course guide. Here’s how I’d do it:

(a) Find Two Refereed Journal Articles
Go to the library website, click on databases, click on ‘search by subject’ and scroll down to ‘Media’. I’d probably use either ‘Communication and Mess Media Complete’ (which is run by EbscoHost) or ‘Communication Studies A Sage Full Text Collection) (run by Sage). Those are the largest. The second one is full text. MediaScan is run by Informit, which features more Australian content, and JSTOR is primarily older content. I’d avoid it, as I would Margaret Gee’s Australian Media Guide – which has a pretty haphazard search engine.

(b) Find two academic monographs.
An academic monograph is a book by one or more authors. You can tell it’s not an anthology because it will say ‘By So and So’ not ‘Edited’ or ‘Compiled by So and So’. You can find them through the library website. The best approach is to find a few things that look useful, jot down the Dewey decimal numbers and then browse through the stacks in the library.

(c) Find an academic anthology
This is pretty much the same process as above. You can’t actually search for an anthology. Find the Dewey numbers for the topic you’re looking for, then browse until you find something with ‘Edited by’ written on it. It’ll include a collection of work by numerous authors all on the same topic.

(d) Find a Report
This is probably the hardest thing to find. Start searching through Google. Look for government or industry groups that have an interest in the area you’re studying .Find their websites and look for things that say “Publications’ or “Research”. Again, it’s a matter of browsing. Some classic examples are:

Australian Policy Online (Note the section that says ‘Creative Economy’).
http://apo.org.au/

Australian Communication and Media Authority
http://www.acma.gov.au/

Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellency in Creative Industries and Innovation
http://www.cci.edu.au/

Attorney General’s Website
http://www.ag.gov.au/

Office of Film and Literature Classification
http://www.oflc.gov.au/

Copyright Agency Limited
http://www.copyright.com.au/

Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
http://www.dbcde.gov.au/

(e) Advertising or Other Primary Source
This one is easy. It can be anything relevant to your topic – from a magazine ad to something on YouTube to your own Facebook profile.

(f) Newspaper or Magazine Article
Find an article or report relative to your topic. You can use the databases for this. Both JSTOR and EbscoHost are heavily loaded with non-refereed, journalistic material. Alternately wade through whatever magazines or newspapers you’ve come across recently.

STEP THREE
You need to answer all four parts of question three (as outlined in the reader) for EVERY source. Let’s consider the question I made up in step one, and apply it to an academic anthology:

Gelder, Ken and Sarah Thornton (eds). 1997, The Subcultures Reader, Routledge, London.

As a compiled overview of the major works to impact upon subcultural studies, Gelder and Thornton’s reader shows clearly the impact of Birmingham School theory, with its focus on British influenced academics and repetitive references to the rise of punk. That said, this retains its worth as a comprehensive overview of the most widely referenced work on subculture prior to the turn of the century. By providing key excerpts from conventional cultural studies, it outlines the toolbox with which most researchers have approached subculture in the face of Web 2.0.

How I Would Prepare for this Assignment
Keep in mind, there are no right and wrong answers with this test. I do not have a sheet saying that you must give specific answers. What I’m looking for is your ability to analyze, unpack and give an appraisal of how a piece of advertising works.

Before the Test:
-First off, do the readings, particularly the week three and four readings. If you’ve done them properly, this assignment will make a lot more sense. If you haven’t done them, I’d estimate your chance of failing goes up 50%.
-If you’re nervous about it, look at the test questions and apply them to some ads. Talk it over with other people, talk about advertising and think about what the ads are doing.
-Familiarize yourself with the key concepts. Again, this involves doing the readings and looking at the definitions I’ve put up online.
-Remember that what I’m looking for is your ability to think critically and analyze a piece of advertising. As long as I can see that you can look at an ad and see that it's doing more than simply presenting you with a product, you’ll probably pass.

Once You Get The Test Paper and See the Example:
(1) Look for the Signs. Look at everything in the ad and take note of everything you can see. If it was me, I’d bring in some note paper and write it down. This isn’t tricky – just look at the ad and write everything you see.
(2) Think about the ‘discourses’ involved. If you find the term confusing, look at this way: What themes do you see?
(3) Think about how those themes tie the signs together to create a ‘myth’ or story.
(4) Think about what that story says about the world – what is it trying to make you think, whose interests is it working for? What is it implying is good or bad? With that in mind, you should be able to pick the ideologies behind it.

Here's some examples:

First Assignment Questions

Question One: 5 Points
How could hegemony be said to be operating in this text In answering, suggest the ideologies or dominant interests whose value system underpins the text?

The question is asking you to locate and discuss how the concept of hegemony is at work within the text and what ideology/ideologies this hegemony is related to. As such, you need to relate your response to both of these concepts. In order to answer this question, consider:

-What specific beliefs and ideas are presented in the text?
-How does the text construct a particular perspective, viewpoint or belief on the issue that is being ‘correct’ or ‘dominant’?
-How does the text convince you to accept a particular viewpoint or perspective as being the correct one?


Question Two: 4 Points
Identify the key discourses at work in this text.

This question is asking you to identify what particular discourses are used within the text, and thus which ideologies are present and at work within the text. As such, consider:

-What language and imagery is used within the text? Is this language or imagery specific to a particular genre/institution/media form?
-How do these discourses work to create stories and ideals that underpin the dominant ideologies presented within the text?

Question Three: 6 Points
Offer preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings of this text.

For this question, you need to provide a reading of each type. Consider:

-How can I read this text in a way that accepts both the message and the belief supporting it?
-How can I read this text in a way that, although it might reject the message, still accepts the beliefs and social structures that gave rise to it?
-How can I read this text in a way that rejects both the beliefs inherent to the text and the social structure that gave rise to them?

Examples for First Assignment

Here are some examples for the first assignment, with some comments from Roland Barthes.

Barthes talks about ideology as supported by ‘myths’ – ideas that teach us to interpret the world in a particular way. He says such ‘myths’ are a “prohibition for man against inventing himself.” By that he means that they provide a sort of framework through which we understand the world. What’s he’s interested in is who that framework benefits and how we not only accept it, but accept it without even thinking about it.

These examples all from his book Mythologies.

Example One:
“I am at the barber's, and a copy of Paris-Match is offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But, whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without any colour discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called oppressors. I am therefore again faced with a greater semiological system: there is a signifier, itself already formed with a previous system (a black soldier is giving the French salute); there is a signified (it is here a purposeful mixture of Frenchness and militariness)…"
-Barthes



Example Two:

“Such is the world of Elle: women there are always a homogenous species, an established body jealous of its privileges, still more enamored of the burdens that go with them. …the feminine world of Elle, a world without men, but entirely constituted by the gaze of man…. Love, work, write, be business women or women of letters ,but always remember that man exists, and that you are not made like him; your order is free on the condition that it depends on his…” -Barthes










This is an image from a fashion magazine from the late 1920s. Note the car in the background.

This is another article from a French fashion magazine. Note both the similarity of all the models and the fact they're all doing housework.

This comes from a later edition of Petit Echo de la Mode. A good way of figuring out the ideology behind something like this is to think of what 'story' the image is attempting to impart. Note the inclusion of the boat and the varied ages of the women in the picture.





What do all these images have in common?
What signs they're all using?
What are they trying to sell?
Who benefits from those sales?


Example Three:
Here's some more contemporary examples.


These are less obviously trying to sell clothes. What is the point of magazines like this? What are they trying to sell and to whom?

Note the mass of text on the cover, surrounding the model. If we take each of these as signs, connecting to each other, what meanings is this cover trying to convey? Those meanings are obviously trying to convince you to buy something, but what exactly?

There's less text on the cover, but this magazine definitely provides an image of 'right' and 'wrong'. Again, what is it trying to sell and to whom? And how is it doing that?

This is a French edition of Marie Claire. Even without being able to read the text, is it possible to guess the meanings the cover is trying to convey and identify which audience its aiming at? It's obviously not trying to sell clothes.

In the week three reading there's an overview of Louis Althusser's notion of 'interpellation'. The reading defines this as:

"Individuals are interpellated (have social identities conferred on them) through ideological state apparatuses from which people gain their sense of identity as well as their understanding of reality."

How can we apply that idea to these images?


Example Four:

The last images were all covers from magazines aimed at women. Playboy is obviously aimed at men - yet its cover shares one basic simularity with the above images. Why is a magazine aimed at men, ostensibly a totally different audience, using the same central sign as magazines aimed at women?











Think about those things in relation to the questions for the first assignment and answer the following:

(1) What 'myths' or ideas are these magazines trying to sell you? In other words, why would you want one of these magazines?
(2) Who benefits from you buying these magazines?
(3) What do you think of these magazine covers? Are there parts you agree with? Are there parts you disagree with?

Definitions of Semiotics, Discourse, Ideology and Hegemony

Definitions of Semiotics, Discourse, Ideology and Hegemony

Here's some basic definitions of the major terms we've used over the first few weeks of the course.


Semiotics and Language
Really Basic Definition:
Semiotics is the idea that we communicate through a system of signs. Those signs can be words, pictures, sounds etc etc. They take on meaning by connecting to each other.

“Language becomes the medium through which a hierarchical structure of power is perpetuated and the medium through which conceptions of ‘truth’, ‘order’, and ‘reality’ become established.”
-Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin



Discourse
Really Basic Definition:
Discourse describes the ‘environment’ in which words, pictures, objects and images get used. All communication takes place within discursive environments.

"Whenever one can describe, between a number of statements, such a system of dispersion, whenever, between objects, types of statement, concepts, or thematic choices, one can define a regularity… we will say for the sake of convenience, that we are dealing with a discursive formation…”
-Michel Foucault


Ideology
Really Basic Definition:
The word ‘ideology’ describes the belief systems through which we understand the world.

“The most elementary definition of ideology is probably the well-known phrase from Marx’s Capital: “they do not know it, but they are doing it.”
“…reality itself cannot reproduce itself without this so-called ideological mystification.”
-Slavoj Zizek

“In ideology ‘men represent their real conditions of existence to themselves in an imaginary form’”.
-Louis Althusser

Hegemony
Really Basic Definition: Hegemony describes the way belief systems are subtly made to benefit certain social groups.

“Originally, hegemony referred to the way that one nation could exert ideological and social, rather than military or coercive, power over another. However, cultural theorists tend to use the term to describe the process by which a dominant class wins the willing consent of the subordinate classes to the system that ensures their subordination.”
-John Fiske

Week 3: Discourse, Ideology and Hegemony Examples

Here's some examples of media exhibiting clear signs of discourse, ideology and hegemony.

Last week we learned that Saussure says communication takes place through 'signs'. A sign is constructed of two parts:

(1) A signifier, which is a word, object, image or sound.
(2) A signified, which is the concept that signifier triggers off.

A signifier can trigger off multiple concepts. It will also change its meaning depending on the discourse in which it appears. Here's a couple of examples:


Example One:
This is the original trailer for the 1986 film Top Gun, one of the great examples of mid-eighties Cold War propaganda:



Example Two:



The Cultural Studies academic Stuart Hall says there's a couple of basic questions to ask yourself when trying to decipher work like this:

(1) Within these texts, which elements are operating as signifiers and what concepts - signifieds - are they evoking? In other words, what images, sounds or words are being presented and what meaning do you think they're trying to impart?

(2) Now consider the ideology of behind this film. What is this film trying to make you think? Who benefits from making you think in that way?


Now let's consider some examples that high light the importance of 'discourse'.

Foucault says that nothing is meaningful except within discourse. Let's consider an example in which the images from Top Gun are put into a different discourse.



What has this text done that changes the meaning of the film? A good way to identify this is to think about the different discursive understandings it employes in relation to gender, sexuality, the military and popular film.