Mass media companies have obligations beyond profits to serve as a public sphere and support citizenship. An ideal public sphere allows private citizens to assemble, engage in dialogue, and influence government. While mass media enables a proxy public sphere, tensions exist between citizen engagement and profit motives. Media should provide information, knowledge, representation and communication to support cultural rights and active citizenship, but it is unclear if such a system can thrive under commercial pressures of a free market. Analysis of media organizations and culture of production helps understand how media content is created and shaped for audiences.

1. Mass Communication & Media Literacy 12

2. The public sphere What obligations do media companies have beyond delivering a return on their investment? What is the role of the media as a public sphere?

3. The public sphere http://bit.ly/gbNlX9 a virtual or imaginary community which does not necessarily exist in any identifiable space. In its ideal form, the public sphere is "made up of private people gathered together as a public and articulating the needs of society with the state" (176). Through acts of assembly and dialogue, the public sphere generates opinions and attitudes which serve to affirm or challenge--therefore, to guide--the affairs of state. In ideal terms, the public sphere is the source of public opinion needed to "legitimate authority in any functioning democracy" (Rutherford 18).

4. The public sphere Does mass communication afforded by the mass media offer an option for the operation of a proxy public sphere? But what about profits? Should they treat audiences as citizens? Citizenship can be identified with The right to participate fully in existing patterns of social life and to help shape the forms that they may take in future (Murdoch – http://bit.ly/behindthescreens ) Civil, political, social and economic, and cultural rights

5. Cultural rights Entail rights in four areas: Information Knowledge Representation Communication These areas must be served by the media in order to ensure an active and participating citizenship Can such a system exist (or thrive) when its in thrall to a free market? Can it exist in a globally converged free market ? http://bit.ly/mediaownership

6. Cultural rights US newsreader Mika Brzezinski has attempted to burn her script live on television in protest at being made to lead her bulletin on Paris Hilton. The co-presenter of MSNBC's Morning Joe programme refused to read out the story about the celebrity socialite's release from jail ahead of items on Iraq. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VdNcCcweL0

7. Cultural rights http://wikileaks.ch/

8. http://bit.ly/hXO1Gt

9. Organisation studies of the media Helps us to consider the practices and decisions that lie behind the origination, development and delivery of media products – as commodities and texts that have meaning for us. Examines the way that staff roles and production processes are arranged within a single company Starts by mapping the different divisions, staff groupings, production activities and functional roles in a specific business. Allows us to focus on the concrete processes behind production that we fail to see as consumers

12. New Media http://bit.ly/fufDKt

13. Create your own

14. Broad categories Primary creative personnel Technical craft workers Creative managers Owners and executives Hesmondalgh (2002)

15. Gatekeeping http://bit.ly/fRTJXh

16. Gatekeeping http://bit.ly/fRTJXh

17. The culture of production ‘the distinctive practices used in the production of the [artefact] and the way that such widespread practices are represented in terms of specific values, beliefs and patterns of working’ (Du Gay 1997) Data gathered through workplace ethnography Geertz and Pacanowsky ‘critical theory of communication in organisations’ in Griffin

18. The culture of production Explore the brand and identity of the product the media workers produce Identify and analyse the routine tasks that media workers undertake to produce the product Contextualise individual contributions in the hierarchy of the organisation Identify and analyse the different ideas of audiences used by media workers and how they find out about them Explore the ethos of craft, creativity, professionalism that informs a particular media job

19. What is it? What is it? Why is it important?

20. Media in the Digital Age

21. Rushkoff on the media http://rushkoff.com/videoaudio/web-20-2/