Media and the Public Sphere: Michele Hilmes

CA 613 Topics in Television and Film: Media and the Public Sphere Hilmes

Fall 2000 Wednesday 2:25-5:35 Communication Arts

Since its very beginnings in radio, broadcasting has been understood not merely as an entertainment medium nor as an art form, but as a vital part of the social, cultural and political system of the nation. This is true not only in the United States but in every other country as well. Television forms a crucial component of our "public sphere:" that

virtual but quite real space in which social and cultural issues are discussed, political events are played out, groups and individuals vie for legitimacy, and the public life of the country takes place. This doesn't just happen in the Sunday morning public affairs shows, or on public television. In sitcoms, dramas, daytime talk shows, soap operas, sports broadcasts, reality programs, documentaries, mini-series and films, notions as

important to our public life as identity, race, gender, sexuality, political opinions, lifestyle, ethics, religious beliefs, and all the other ingredients of political, social and cultural power are portrayed and discussed.

How well does the American media system work to sustain a vital and open public sphere? Who gets to dominate the voices that speak on television and radio, and whose voices are shunted to the margins or silenced completely? How do different kinds of programs, and different ways of organizing and funding media, work as contributors to an open and lively public sphere of debate and representation, and which ones damage it? What can we as media students, researchers, and future professionals do to contribute to keeping our public sphere alive and well?

This class will examine such issues, and attempt to answer some of these questions. We'll begin be looking at public sphere theories of the media, those that have been crucial in shaping and restructuring our media system and those of other nations. We'll examine the US commercial network system alongside the more prevalent public service system of Great Britain and other countries. We will analyze the contributions of alternative, public, and community media as outlets for the voices of "subaltern counterpublics," and look at the potential for new technologies like the Internet and new movements like low power radio to keep these voices active. We'll look at the debate over "transgressive" programs, like talk shows and sitcoms, and evaluate both their messages and their critics.

Requirements: All students will be required to participate fully in the class. Since this class meets only once a week, missing one class is the equivalent of missing a full week. Only one such absence will be tolerated without an automatic grade reduction, except in cases of particular hardship. Required reading for each week’s class must be completed before the session under which it is listed. Recommended readings are entirely optional, except for the starred (*) titles which are required for graduate students only. Students will complete a 12-15 page research paper on a topic of their choice, guided by discussion with the instructor. (For graduate students, paper length is 20-25 pages.) In addition, each student will be responsible for a presentation to the class during the course of the semester. These presentations will be evaluated both by other students in the class and by the instructor. Thoughtful and responsible evaluations for each presentation also form part of the course requirements, and will be counted in the final grade.

Midterm exam 20%

12-15 page research paper 50%

[Proposal and research strategy 15%]

[Completed paper 35%]

Presentation 20%

Evaluations 10%

Week 1 9/6 Introduction: Media and Democracy

Gross, Larry, “Minorities, Majorities and the Media,” in Tamar Liebes and James Curran, eds., Media, Ritual and Identity (Routledge 1998)

Week 2 9/13 Fears of Mass Culture

Kant, Immanuel “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” (1784) in H. B. Nisbet, ed., Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge 1991) 54-60

Adorno, Theodor W. and Horkheimer, Max, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” (1932) in James Curran et al., eds, Mass Communication and Society (Sage 1997) 349-83

Barnett, Steven, “Dumbing Down or Reaching Out: Is It Tabloidisation Wot Done It?” in Jean Seaton, ed., Politics and the Media (Blackwell 1998) 75-90

Fiske, John, “Popularity and the Politics of Information” in Peter Dahlgren and Colin Sparks, eds, Journalism and Popular Culture (Sage 1992) 45-63

Recommended Reading:

*Adorno, Theodor W., “The Culture Industry Reconsidered” (1967) in S.E. Brown and D.M. Kellner, eds., Critical Theory and Society: A Reader (Routledge 1989) 128-89

Benjamin, Walter, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in Mass Communication and Society 384-

*Czitrom, Daniel, “Towards a New Community?” in Media and the American Mind (North Carolina 1982) 91-121

Huyssen, Andreas, “Woman as Mass Culture,” in After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Indiana 1986)

Dewey, John, The Public and Its Problems (1927)

Week 3 9/20 Habermas and his critics

Habermas, Jurgen ”The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia

Article” (1974) in Critical Theory and Society: A Reader 136-42

Calhoun, Craig, “Introduction: Habermas and the Public Sphere” (1992) in Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (MIT 1992) 1-48

Fraser, Nancy, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, 108-42

Peters, John Durham, “Distrust of Representation: Habermas on the public sphere,” Media, Culture and Society V.15 (1993) 541-571

Recommended Reading:

Habermas, Jurgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge 1989)

*Thompson, John B. “The Theory of the Public Sphere,” Theory, Culture and Society 10 (1993) 173-189

*McLaughlin, Lisa, “Feminism, the Public Sphere, Media and Democracy,” Media, Culture and Society V. 15/3 (1993) 599-620 (Review of Fraser’s work)

Landes, Joan, “The Public and the Private Sphere: A Feminist Reconsideration,” in Feminists Read Habermas ed J. Meehan (Routledge 1995) 91-116.

Lacey, Kate, Feminine Frequencies: Gender, German Radio, and the Public Sphere (Michigan 1996) – Chapters 1 and 9

D’Entreves, Maurizio Passerin, “Hannah Arendt and the Idea of Citizenship,” in Dimensions of Radical Democracy ed. Chantal Mouffe (Verso 1992)

Week 4 9/27 Concepts of Public Service/Public Interest Broadcasting

Scannell, Paddy, “Public Service Broadcasting: The History of A Concept” in A. Goodwin and G. Whannel, eds., Understanding Television (Routledge 1989) 11-29

Garnham, Nicholas, “The Media and the Public Sphere” in Calhoun, ed., in Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (1992)

Aufderheide, Patricia, “Cable Television and the Public Interest,” Journal of Communication 42/1 (Winter 1992) 52-65

Collins, Richard, “Public Service Broadcasting,” in Broadcasting and Audiovisual Policy in the European Single Market (Libbey 1994) 51-74

Pratten, Stephen, “Needs and Wants: The Case of

Broadcasting Policy,” Media, Culture and Society 20 (1998) 381-407

Recommended Reading:

*Hall, Stuart, “Which Public, Whose Service?” in Wilf Stevenson, ed. All Our Futures: The Changing Role and Purpose of the BBC (BFI 1993)

*Scannel, Paddy, “Public Service Broadcasting and Modern Public Life” Media Culture and Society 11 (1989) 135-66

Price, Monroe, Television, The Public Sphere and National Identity (Oxford 1995)

Keane, John, The Media and Democracy (Cambridge 1991)

Dahlgren, Peter, Television and the Public Sphere: Citizenship, Democracy and the Media (1995)

*Frith, Simon, “The Black Box: The Value of Television and the Future of Television Research” Screen 41/1 (Spring 2000) 33-50

Week 5 10/4 Commercialism and the Public Sphere

Ian Connell, “Commercial Broadcasting and the British Left” Screen 24/6 (1983) 70-80

Szykowny, Rick, “Bewildering the Herd” (interview with Noam Chomsky) The Humanist (Nov/Dec 1990) 8-17

Elving, Ronald D. “C-Span Gets Pushy” Columbia Journalism Review (September 1995) 38+

Herbst, Susan. “On Electronic Public Space: Talk Shows in Theoretical Perspective” Political Communication 12 (1995) 263-74

Squires, Catherine R. “Black Talk Radio: Defining Community Needs and Identity” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 5/2 (Spring 2000) 73-96

Meijer, Irene Costera, “Advertising Citizenship: an essay on the performative power of consumer culture” Media, Culture and Society 20/2 (1998) 235-49

Recommended Reading:

Hoynes, William, Public Televison For Sale: The Media, The Market and the Public Sphere (Westview 1994)

Ledbetter, James, Made Possible By...The Death of Public Broadcasting (Verso 1997)

Bennett, James R. and Christopher Lee, “Public Broadcasting in the US: a bibliography,” Part 2, Journal of Popular Film and Television 24 (Winter 1997) 152-62

Week 8 10/25 Presentations

Week 9 11/1 Alternative and Community Radio, Public Access Cable

Kellner, Douglas, “Intellectuals, the New Public Spheres, and Techno-Politics” in Toulouse, Chris and Timothy W. Luke, eds. The Politics of Cyberspace (Routledge 1998) 167-86

Durlin, Marty and Cathy Melio, “The Grassroots Radio Movement in the US,” paper presented at Grassrooots Radio Conference, Madison, Wisconsin, July 2000

Larsen, Ernest, “When the Crowd Rustles the Tiger Roars” Art Journal 54 (Winter 95) 73-6

Land, Jeff, “Free Speech Radio” in Active Radio: 91-111

King, Donna L. and Christopher Mele, “Making Public Access Television: community participation, media literacy, and the public sphere,” JBEM 43/4 Fall 1999