Glossary of Key Terms

Studying international media & communications can be tough, so here's a bunch of terms for you to use that unfortunately we never got!

a useful guide to key terms & concepts

Immanent Critique

is essentially a method of analyzing the inherent properties or values the subject possesses. This is especially helpful in our understanding of the concepts in Cultures of Everyday life. By inherently challenging the experiences of day-to-day life and analyzing them, it helps us to derive political conclusions or criticisms,. It is most related to Henri Lefebvre and his Critique of Everyday Life. In the critique, norms inherent in our everyday life is reconstructed such that we are given a different point of view on the normative understanding we have of everyday life.

One example is how new technologies has made us rethink our lives. One such new technology is the recent emergence of social media, which has changed our lives to such an extent that our everyday lives are now engrossed by social media. Though it may seem that social media has certain benefits for us as its users, social media is actually more beneficial to companies in selling us products and selling other businesses our personal information. Immanent critique serves as a useful tool in this case, bringing to light a different side of social norms.

Counter-public sphere

is a space in which those who do not have a voice in the mainstream public sphere, also known as the marginalized, gather to debate certain issues.This term was borne out of the idea of a public sphere, which was coined by Jurgen Habermas. It is an arena for the minority to create their alternative discourse that in turn challenges mainstream political ideas. The aim of the counter-public sphere is to have this political discourse challenge dominant ideology. The counter-public sphere has the potential to create and influence new forms of social relationships and cater to the needs of different communities.

One example is the women’s movements of the 1960s. Women had started realizing their sense of dissatisfaction was not an individual problem, and that many women around them were having the same experience. This led to these women joining together and creating a counter-public sphere for which they had their own voice.

With such different values, identities and cultures represented in both the public and counter-public sphere, such communication based on diversity could promote equality and democracy in society.

Additionally, the concept is helpful in exploring themes such as the public sphere as well as the digital sphere. One key example is how the Zapatistas used the internet to critique neo-liberal capitalism and bring to light to the world their situation.

“Strategies” is a practice of “power”. It assumes a place can be isolated and circumscribed. It depends on “space”. Regulatory bodies use it to exercise control over “others”, like subordinates, through the use of spaces and places, like schools, churches, etc. It is to create both a space and a set of rules for individuals on how to behave.

On the other hand, “tactics” is the counterpoint to “strategies”. Tactics depends on “time” and is a resistance to strategy through creative means. For Michel de Certeau, this meant exploiting a gap in the strategy to act tactically or creatively. An example of a tactic that is potentially subversive is Parkour.

Strategies

& Tactics

Citizen Journalism

is an alternative form of media reporting news where ordinary people document and publish personal photographs or video footage of events. It provides a real live footage of an event that might serve as a true reflection of what actually happened and was witnessed by the citizen. It creates a counter-narrative which challenges mainstream media.

This has led to a democratisation of news consumption and production, while ensuring extra scrutiny over the elites in power, as well as forcing traditional news media corporations to be extra careful with the news they produce (these corporations are no longer simply subservient to power and money in the industry, but also responsible for ensuring that news reported is a true representation of what happened).

In recent times, citizen journalism has been increasingly integrated with the mainstream media. Also, citizen journalism has the ability to bring to widespread attention, news which may have been ignored by the mainstream media. On the other hand, citizen journalists may show their personal feelings during the reporting which may cause biased news.

Surrealism

is an aesthetic theory of everyday life. It is considered a way of defamiliarising everyday life. This is mainly done through the use of collage and montage, or the production of juxtaposition. Some examples of surrealism is the zooming in of things that we see all the time but take for granted, as well as tangible items like shop mannequins.

Two of the main theorists of Surrealism are George Bataille and Michel Leiris. Another main theorist is Breton, and he suggests that in order to find the surreal, one had to start with the real, not necessarily dreaming up marvellous or imaginative things.

Surrealists argue that the way people think about this world is strongly influenced by science and capitalism, but they would like to see the world in a more surrealistic way. Surrealists agree with Freud in that we must find a way to engage with the everyday world, in order to project our internal desires, not just our desires against capitalism.

is a type of alternative media where ordinary people produce their own news content and usually publish it on news sites.

First discussed by Marshall McLuhan in 1970, Participatory Media acts a bit like citizen journalism, in which anyone can participate in the writing of news stories, analyzing and collecting useful information. It is usually produced by grassroots groups to disseminate their viewpoints. This usually helps to overcome the mass media filters, such as the propaganda model and the filters set by those in power. Participatory media is becoming more common nowadays with the rise of the Internet blogs and personal sites.

Most of the time, perspectives of news stories from participatory media is personal, or local, that might not appear in mainstream news. Some examples are IndyMedia and OhmyNews, both with differing degrees of success. However, Participatory Media has its problems, such as potential funding problems due to its usually non-profit nature, and the hard truth that such news sites only flourish in a minority of places.

Participatory

Media

is a social movement founded in 1936. Mass Observation is the study and recording of the social habits and opinions of ordinary people. It is used to find out about the lives of ordinary people, in order to gain sociological insight about society as a whole; a point to note is that people themselves conduct the recording of everyday activities. This means the respondents are not passive, they actively take a role to record their everyday lives.

Mass Observation movements utilise surveys, diaries and archives - things we encounter on an everyday basis - to study humankind. The three main theorists for Mass Observation are Humphrey Jennings, creator of the film This Is Britain, Tom Harrisson, a hard-nosed anthropologist, and Charles Madge, a typical surrealist. An example of Mass Observation is Harrisson’s Bolton project, in which he studies the life of Bolton’s working-class population.

Two significant methodological foundations of Mass Observation are anthropology and surrealism. Anthropology is applied on Mass Observation by dealing with repressed elements in everyday life so that the truth of life could be found. In this case, the native culture of the ethno could be shown eventually. Whereas surrealism in Mass Observation suggests that when people observe everyday life, it is an exercise of defamiliarisation.

Mass Observation

Montage

refers to a presentation and combination of several images, usually representing time, space and character, in one photomontage. As a result, a new image of different meaning as compared to the original individual photographs can be generated. Also, the montage can be used to juxtapose things that are not normally associated with each other (through compare and contrast) for surrealistic purposes. A montage contains factors of real and imaginary, thus we can relate this to the concepts of realism and surrealism too.

A montage blurs the distinction between sociological and aesthetic work. It is the aestheticisation or representation of everyday life. It is prominent in the module of Cultures of Everyday Life. Filmmakers and photographers are the main users of montage. For Ben Highmore, montage can be used to link the fragments of daily life by putting things side by side to highlight their points and to reveal the bigger picture of everyday.

Communicative

Capitalism

is an idea first suggested by Jodi Dean, where profit is generated from the act of communication itself. Through our increasing use of communication technologies like the internet and social media, corporations are able to earn money through the sale of data to advertisers. Also, profit is generated from maintaining our attention, which has spawned whole industries simply based on maintaining our attention.

Dean thinks we are in the age of ‘whatever blogging’. People are highly involved in the network self, doing self-branding and self-promotion online. Trivial things such as viral videos also capture our attention and encourage people to share them. In the meantime, such data becomes commodity for profit by advertisers and Internet companies. In Dean’s words, “communicative capitalism rely on the exploitation of communication”.

One example is how Facebook not only earns profit by selling advertisements, but also through selling personal data - data we ourselves upload on the internet - to advertisers. Communicative Capitalism is useful for the module of Communications & Technology as it shows one possible downside of our extensive use of communicative technologies, amongst all the endless positive possibilities.

Digital Divide

refers to an inequality of access and knowledge on digital technology. This phenomenon has emerged due to the development of digital media and is a rising concern that shows the economic inequality between developed and developing countries.

One type of digital divide is geographical. For example, most countries in the Western hemisphere have access to digital technologies, while most countries in the Third World have little or no access to such. However, it should be noted that even within countries that are known to have access to digital technologies, there is still a minority who are unable to utilize such technologies. The Digital Divide is a global problem that could worsen, as if nothing is done to improve the have-nots’ access to modern communicative technologies. Those who have access to digital technology would be able to use it to continually increase their connectivity with the global digital space, while those who do not have access to such modern technologies would continue to be left out and unable to accrue these benefits.

Mudhai et al’s African Media and the Digital Public Sphere illustrated a valid example of digital divide. The struggle with Internet accessibility in Africa has raised concerns over whether the wealth of a nation is determined by digital technology and connectivity with the web.