Week 1: Medium
The aim of the course is to gain a critical understanding of media theory.
What is Media Theory?
Theory: A system of ideas intended to explain something on general principles
● Nomothetic type of knowledge
○ Aims at generalizations and formulation of laws
○ Natural sciences
○ “Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius”
○ From observations to general law
○ Theory as falsifiable
● Ideographic type of knowledge
○ Aims at understanding the meaning of contingent, unique and often cultural or
subjective phenomena
○ Humanities
○ “How were property relations organized in Ancient Greece”
○ Theory as a toolbox
● Normative
○ How the world is
● Critical
○ What is wrong with the world
● Endogenous
○ Within the discipline
● Exogenous
○ Interdisciplinary influences
Theory encourages discussions → Comes out of a national, poltical, or economic context.
Influences the theories,
Theory is a process, it’s never finished: ‘I am not interested in Theory, I am interested in going
on theorising’ (Hall, 1996).
Theories come out of national, political, economic context and it influences these theories
There are also travelling theories and productive cross-pollination → Exchange of ideas and
adaptation of foreign theories to domestic cultures or different time eras
Stuart Hall → Theorizing as an open horizon
, ● Descriptive (this is how the world works) versus critical (this is what is wrong with the
world) → Administrative versus critical theory (Lazarsfeld)
● Endogenous versus exogenous media theory → From within the discipline versus
interdisciplinary influences.
Reflexive Nostalgia → Artifical cultural construct
● Example: Mad Men, glamorization, highlighting “ideals” (cynicism) of the 1950s
○ Presents a version of the fifties, both aware of its artificiality and an object of its
nostalgic politics
○
○ Ravizza engages with Jameson's concept of nostalgia as mere pastiche and
argues that in Mad Men something else is at play.
○ Provocative: Jameson wants to shock people by saying that culture is exhausted.
● What makes Jameson and Ravizza’s analysis ideographic is that they do not create a
generalized theory of nostalgia but instead argue that the nostalgia enacted in American
Graffiti or Mad Men takes a particular form. In other words, both bring out what is unique
or specific to these respective films/series. But, equally important, they do so in a
context, where one theorist reacts against another.
What is a medium?
Raymond Williams etymology in keywords:
1. The general sense of an intervening or intermediate agency or substance (it mediates)
2. The conscious technical sense as in the distinction between print and sound and vision
as media
3. The specialised capitalist sense, like newspaper is a medium or material forms-
television, radio
The medium is focused now more on the technical side.
McLuhan → Medium is any intervening substance between communication
McLuhan associates media as an extension of a human body. (Not exactly the most original,
was already explored)
● Age of Anxiety: Anxious about what we’re seeing, stressed due to so much information
The aim of the course is to gain a critical understanding of media theory.
What is Media Theory?
Theory: A system of ideas intended to explain something on general principles
● Nomothetic type of knowledge
○ Aims at generalizations and formulation of laws
○ Natural sciences
○ “Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius”
○ From observations to general law
○ Theory as falsifiable
● Ideographic type of knowledge
○ Aims at understanding the meaning of contingent, unique and often cultural or
subjective phenomena
○ Humanities
○ “How were property relations organized in Ancient Greece”
○ Theory as a toolbox
● Normative
○ How the world is
● Critical
○ What is wrong with the world
● Endogenous
○ Within the discipline
● Exogenous
○ Interdisciplinary influences
Theory encourages discussions → Comes out of a national, poltical, or economic context.
Influences the theories,
Theory is a process, it’s never finished: ‘I am not interested in Theory, I am interested in going
on theorising’ (Hall, 1996).
Theories come out of national, political, economic context and it influences these theories
There are also travelling theories and productive cross-pollination → Exchange of ideas and
adaptation of foreign theories to domestic cultures or different time eras
Stuart Hall → Theorizing as an open horizon
, ● Descriptive (this is how the world works) versus critical (this is what is wrong with the
world) → Administrative versus critical theory (Lazarsfeld)
● Endogenous versus exogenous media theory → From within the discipline versus
interdisciplinary influences.
Reflexive Nostalgia → Artifical cultural construct
● Example: Mad Men, glamorization, highlighting “ideals” (cynicism) of the 1950s
○ Presents a version of the fifties, both aware of its artificiality and an object of its
nostalgic politics
○
○ Ravizza engages with Jameson's concept of nostalgia as mere pastiche and
argues that in Mad Men something else is at play.
○ Provocative: Jameson wants to shock people by saying that culture is exhausted.
● What makes Jameson and Ravizza’s analysis ideographic is that they do not create a
generalized theory of nostalgia but instead argue that the nostalgia enacted in American
Graffiti or Mad Men takes a particular form. In other words, both bring out what is unique
or specific to these respective films/series. But, equally important, they do so in a
context, where one theorist reacts against another.
What is a medium?
Raymond Williams etymology in keywords:
1. The general sense of an intervening or intermediate agency or substance (it mediates)
2. The conscious technical sense as in the distinction between print and sound and vision
as media
3. The specialised capitalist sense, like newspaper is a medium or material forms-
television, radio
The medium is focused now more on the technical side.
McLuhan → Medium is any intervening substance between communication
McLuhan associates media as an extension of a human body. (Not exactly the most original,
was already explored)
● Age of Anxiety: Anxious about what we’re seeing, stressed due to so much information
