STRC 2111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Retail Therapy, Commodification, Consumerism
2 May 2018
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• Agenda Setting Theory (Socio-Psychological)
◦ Focus on news (especially politics)
▪ Two assumptions
▪ News organizations present an agenda: what events are important,
limited # of stories
▪ Audiences rely on the news
▪ News organizations are the gatekeepers
▪ Don’t tell us what to think, but what to think about
▪ Appearance of choice, negated by similarly of stories covered
▪ Well supported by social scientific research
◦ Agenda Setting and Social Media
▪ Echo chamber effect
▪ Our ideas, beliefs, opinions are reinforced in closed social media
environments
▪ News Quantity doesn’t equal news diversity
▪ Tend to follow, like, retweet those with similar beliefs
▪ Increased importance of opinion leaders
▪ Friends, respected analyst
• Encoding/Decoding Theory (AKA Cultural Studies)
◦ Critical, Semiotic Traditions
◦ Hegemony
▪ Domination of one group over another
▪ Domination not only in force, but via popular culture
▪ Media/products
◦ Popular culture promotes consumption
▪ Mass media’s (corporate) goal is profit
▪ Consumerism: Consumption will make you happy
▪ Retail therapy
▪ Commodification: anything can be bought and sold and should be!
▪ Creative: Endless creation of new desires
◦ Encoding/Decoding
▪ Semiotic Tradition: Products of popular culture are encoded
▪ Media/products reinforce some accepted beliefs/values
▪ Rarely any universally accepted codes: audiences decode the signs
▪ Critical tradition: Decoding can be counter-hegemonic
◦ Audiences have three “decoding” options:
▪ Dominant code: accepted reading, surface level and largely accepted
▪ Negotiating code: receiver accepts dominant code, but uses selective
interpretation
▪ Oppositional code: receiver sees the bias in the text, reinterprets or subverts the
dominant code
• Agenda Setting, Cultivation, Encoding/Decoding —> Sender focused.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
News organizations present an agenda: what events are important, limited # of stories. Appearance of choice, negated by similarly of stories covered. Our ideas, beliefs, opinions are reinforced in closed social media environments. Tend to follow, like, retweet those with similar beliefs. Domination not only in force, but via popular culture. Commodification: anything can be bought and sold and should be! Semiotic tradition: products of popular culture are encoded. Rarely any universally accepted codes: audiences decode the signs. Dominant code: accepted reading, surface level and largely accepted. Negotiating code: receiver accepts dominant code, but uses selective interpretation. Oppositional code: receiver sees the bias in the text, reinterprets or subverts the: agenda setting, cultivation, encoding/decoding > sender focused. dominant code. Mass media"s impact on the audience: social media. Not about mass media hierarchies, but the networks of people they connect to each.
