Communication Grad 200A: Communication as a Social Force

Winter 1998

MCC 205
Office Hours: Wed 2 - 3:30pm and by appointment

The course has two objectives. The first is to introduce students to social science theories and approaches in the field of communication. The second is to expose students to various communication institutions, their histories, structures, and operation. The readings are chosen with the aim of combining the two objectives.

Required texts

Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies Without Boundaries: On Telecommunications in a Global Age (Harvard, 1990).

Herbert I. Schiller, Mass Communications and the American Empire [2d edition] (Westview, 1992).

James Curran & Michael Gurevitch, eds., Mass Media and Society (Edward Arnold, 1992).

Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (California, 1980).

Robert Horwitz, The Irony of Regulatory Reform: The Deregulation of American Telecommunications (Oxford, 1989).

Janet Wasko, Hollywood in the Information Age (Texas, 1995).

Joseph Turow, Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World (Chicago, 1996).

Anne Branscomb, Who Owns Information? From Privacy to Public Access (Basic Books, 1994).

Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Blackwell, 1996).

Calendar

I. Communications and the question of power: technologies for freedom or for domination?

Week 1.

Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies Without Boundaries.

Week 2.

Herbert Schiller, Mass Communications and the American Empire.

Frantz Fanon, "The Pitfalls of National Consciousness," pp. 148-205 from The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 1963).

Langdon Winner, "Do Artifacts Have Politics? Daedalus 109/1 (Winter 1980), pp. 121-136 [reading packet].

Recommended: Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi, "The Global and the Local in International Communications," in Mass Media and Society, pp. 118-138.

II. Introduction to some theories and some methods.

Week 3.

Harold Innis, "The Bias of Communication," pp. 33-60 in The Bias of Communication (Toronto, 1951) [reading packet].

Vincent Mosco, The Political Economy of Communications (Sage, 1996), pp. 17-69 [reading packet].

Peter Golding & Graham Murdock, "Theories of Communication and Theories of Society," Communication Research 5/3 (1978), pp. 339-356 [reading packet].

Peter Golding & Graham Murdock, "Culture, Communications, and Political Economy," in Mass Media & Society, pp. 15-32.

Paul Hirsch, "Processing Fads and Fashions," pp. 313-334 in Mukerji & Schudson, eds., Rethinking Popular Culture (California, 1991) [reading packet].

Theodor Adorno, "On Popular Music," Zeitschrift fur sozialforschung 9 (1941) [reading packet].

Week 4.

Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching.

Michael Omi & Howard Winant, selections from Racial Formation in the United States (Routledge, 1986) [reading packet].

III. Communications institutions.

Weeks 5 & 6. Broadcasting and telecommunications; regulation, the market and the public interest

Robert Horwitz, The Irony of Regulatory Reform.

Nicholas Garnham, "The Media and the Public Sphere," in Peter Golding et al, eds., Communicating Politics: Mass Communications and the Political Process (Leicester University Press, 1986) [reading packet].

Eli Noam, Television in Europe (Oxford, 1991), pp. 315-344 [reading packet].

Jay Blumler, "The New Television Marketplace: Imperatives, Implications, Issues," in Mass Media & Society, pp. 194-215.

Michele Martin, Introduction from Hello Central? Gender, Technology and Culture in the Formation of Telephone Systems, (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991), pp. 3-13 [reading packet].

Recommended: James Curran, "Mass Media and Democracy: A Reappraisal," in Mass Media & Society, pp. 82-117.

Week 7. Film and Hollywood

Janet Wasko, Hollywood in the Information Age.

Week 8. Advertising

Joseph Turow, Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World.

Michael Schudson, selections from Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society (Basic Books, 1984) [reading packet].

Week 9. Information

Anne Branscomb, Who Owns Information? From Privacy to Public Access.

Phil Agre, "Surveillance and Capture: Two Models of Privacy," The Information Society 10/2 (1994), pp. 101-127 [reading packet].

IV. Convergence.

Week 10.

Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society.

John Keane, "Eleven Theses on Communicative Abundance," Centre for the Study of Democracy 5/1 (Autumn 1997), pp 11-13 [reading packet].