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.