This week we discuss about the relevance of studying production in media studies. From films to electronic devices, production helps us to understand how media involves labor.

1. Intro to the Media
Spring 2017 – MACS 101

2. Basic Model
Sender Message Receiver

3. Sender Message Receiver
Production

4. Corporations Message Consumer
Production Circulation Consumption
Political Economy

5. Human Labor and Production
1. Everything is produced.
2. All production involves human labor.
3. All consumption also involves human
labor.
4. Even when media are managed by
automatic systems, the maintenance
requires human labor
(from Chapter 3 of e-text)

6. Human Labor and Production
• Interpretation is actually work.
• How do you understand this idea?

7. Human Labor and Production
• At the core of production in Media Studies, or any
field for that matter, is the interaction between
structure and agency that governs individuals,
organizations, and institutions
• In our last session we talk about how each
undergraduate program teach you a set of
rules to make you a professional. Tell other
people in your group about those rules. How
do you think that can be examples of the
distinction between structure and agency in the
etextbook?

8. Agency / Structure

9. Agency / Structure
• Are individuals in control of their own
actions and destinies?
• Or, are they merely (and unconsciously)
subject to particular social circumstances
which determine their behavior?

10. Agency Structure• Individuals possess the
ability to plan, define,
understand, organize,
and execute their
actions.
• Society is a result of
human creativity,
rationality and
autonomy.

11. Individual Structure
• Powerful “structures”
are dominant and
responsible for
orchestrating the
conduct of human
individuals.

12. Agency / Structure
in Media Production
• The Stars: Talented? or Trained?
• Can “a genius” change the whole field? or is
it somehow meeting the audiences’
expectation?

13. Agency / Structure
in Media Consumption
• “Oh, I love …..”:
Is this because I do love them really?
Or, does something allure me
strategically?

14. Levels of Analysis
• At the individual level of analysis, we have a
large number of roles, as the production of media is
multifaceted
• Think of the most common roles in film crew.
Directors, producers, writers. Have you heard
of any uncommon role in producing a film?
What are for example Gaffer, Child wrangler,
Best boy and Dolly Grip.

15. • Gaffer The gaffer is the head of the lighting
department, responsible for the design of the
lighting plan for a production. Sometimes the
gaffer is credited as chief lighting technician.
• Best boy (lighting) The best boy is the chief
assistant to the gaffer. They are not usually on
set, but dealing with the electric truck, rentals,
manpower, and other logistics.

16. • Dolly grip The grip in charge of
operating the camera dollies and
camera cranes is called the dolly
grip. They place, level, and move
the dolly track, then push and
pull the dolly, and usually a
camera operator and camera
assistant as riders.

18. Levels of Analysis
• Finally, many recent forms of media bring together
many of these roles
• What example of media producers can you
named as people who bring together these
roles in platforms like Youtube?

19. Levels of Analysis
• The series chronicles the
behind-the-scenes
events at the fictional
Atlantis Cable News
(ACN) channel. It
features an ensemble
cast including Jeff
Daniels as anchor Will
McAvoy who, together
with his staff, sets out to
put on a news show "in
the face of corporate and
commercial obstacles
and their own personal
entanglement.

20. Levels of Analysis
• At the organizational level of analysis, we study
the actual place where media production takes
place [rather than the individual].
• After watching the clip from The Newsroom
(Season 1 Episode 1 from 50:00 to 1:03:00)
can you recognize some of the organizational
specific practices (access to action, sources,
beat, voice of authority, timeliness, neutrality of
balance)

21. Level of Analysis
• Media Studies research reveals that written and
unwritten rules at the organizational level, as well
as some of the blocks that result from these rules,
interfere with women's and minority group's ability
to move up the organizational ladder.
• After watching the clip from 'Good Girls Revolt"
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7RmbSs
M9xo) can you recognize other instances of
glass ceiling.

22. Glass Ceiling

23. The Glass ceiling
• Media Studies research reveals that written and unwritten rules at
the organizational level, as well as some of the blocks that result
from these rules, interfere with women's and minority group's
ability to move up the organizational ladder.
• The blocks in this context, often referred to as a glass ceiling, refer
to the invisible set of rules and barriers that prevents particular
individuals, as members of a certain group based on gender,
ethnic, national, and/or sexual orientation, from being promoted in
any workplace, including media industries.
• These barriers are not written or even legal, yet have a great
impact in terms of who moves up to the top executive positions in
any given organization. While there are certainly examples of
people who break through the glass ceiling, there are many more
still bound by its limitations.
(from Chapter 3 of e-text)

24. Institutional Level of Analysis
• Institutions are everywhere, governing our
lives in fundamental ways. Many institutional
norms and values inform and govern the
media.
• The institutional level is a set of values and
norms that cannot be found in a location, but
rather exists normatively, philosophically,
legally, and ethically.

25. Institutional Level of Analysis
• “How’s is media regulated?”
• “Why media-product in some countries
excel, but not in others?
• “What is the role of government?”

26. Corporations Message Consumer
Production Circulation Consumption
Political Economy

27. Global

28. Global
• As well you might want to consider the environmental cost -
not just of producing - but of disposal of the unending
obsolescence of digital hardware.
• What do you understand by the term
obsolescence? What other cases of media
affecting the environment can you imagine?

29. What is invisible in media
production?

30. Intro to the Media
Spring 2017– MACS 101

31. Level of Organization
• Individual
• Organizational
• Institutional

32. Glass Ceiling

33. The Glass ceiling
• Media Studies research reveals that written and unwritten rules at
the organizational level, as well as some of the blocks that result
from these rules, interfere with women's and minority group's
ability to move up the organizational ladder.
• The blocks in this context, often referred to as a glass ceiling, refer
to the invisible set of rules and barriers that prevents particular
individuals, as members of a certain group based on gender,
ethnic, national, and/or sexual orientation, from being promoted in
any workplace, including media industries.
• These barriers are not written or even legal, yet have a great
impact in terms of who moves up to the top executive positions in
any given organization. While there are certainly examples of
people who break through the glass ceiling, there are many more
still bound by its limitations.
(from Chapter 3 of e-text)

34. Institutional Level of Analysis
• Institutions are everywhere, governing our
lives in fundamental ways. Many institutional
norms and values inform and govern the
media.
• The institutional level is a set of values and
norms that cannot be found in a location, but
rather exists normatively, philosophically,
legally, and ethically.

35. Institutional Level of Analysis
• “How’s is media regulated?”
• “Why media-product in some countries
excel, but not in others?
• “What is the role of government?”

36. Corporations Message Consumer
Production Circulation Consumption
Political Economy

37. How ”reality” is produced?

38. Case
Reality TV

39. Episode 1. Return

40. Reality TV
• 1. A *hybrid genre combining *fly-on-the-wall
*documentary, quiz show, and popularity contest
which involves television broadcasts supported by
*internet content such as webpages and streamed
media in which selected members of the public
spend time together in the same location. Notable
examples include Big Brother and Survivor, which
first aired in the UK in the 1990’s.
• 2. Broadly, any *documentary programme from the
1990s onwards which is designed primarily to
entertain rather than inform.
• Chandler, Daniel; Munday, Rod. A Dictionary of
Media and Communication (Oxford Quick
Reference) (p. 355). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.

41. • “Reali-TV, then, is an umbrella term for a
number of programming trends that have
rapidly expanded since the late 80s across all
hours of network schedules, first-run
syndication, and cable”
Political economy of Reali-TV by Chad Raphael. Jumpcut, May 1997

42. • extensive use of "actuality" footage of their
subjects,
• reenactments of events, performed by professional
actors, or by the people who experienced them, or
a mix of both;
• a tendency to avoid the studio in favor of "on-
scene" shooting,
• mixing footage shot by unpaid amateur
videographers with that of professionals;
• appealing to the conventions of "liveness," and
"immediacy" and appropriating traditional
conventions of news coverage,

43. • U.S. television underwent a dramatic
restructuring in the 1980s, largely precipitated
by changing patterns of distribution with the
spread of cable and VCRs
• Feeling the squeeze on profits, production
companies and the networks initiated a series
of cost-cutting strategies that translated into an
attack on labor, mainly on below-the-line
workers such as technicians, engineers, and
extras

44. • Economically, the genre fit the needs of producers and
distributors alike for cheaper programming.
• First, these programs largely did away with higher-
priced stars and union talent. The only "name" actors
on these shows were briefly seen as hosts.
• The home video programs relied on amateur
camcorder enthusiasts and freelance professionals.
• Reali-TV programs also cut costs by wholeheartedly
embracing low-end production values
• Producers and network investors have also been
attracted to Reali-TV because of its ability to sell
abroad.

45. Who “invented” it?
Sarah Gertrude Shapiro

48. Organizational Level

54. Political Economy questions
• how much you know about the owners and
workers that produce the media of your daily
life?.
• Who decides which stories will be made into
Hollywood movies?
• Who decides which events will be covered by
news outlets?
• Who decides the narratives and quests to be
pursued in digital gaming? What are the
motivations for these decisions?

55. • What raw materials are necessary to build a
smartphone or a tablet?
• Where are these devices built and why?
• Who owns Google and how do they decide
which web pages to show when you search for
something?
• Who owns Twitter and how do they make
money if the service is free?

56. What is invisible in media
production?

57. Marxism
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSQgCy_iIc
c

58. • Ideology itself represents the
"production of ideas, of
conceptions, of
consciousness," all that "men
say, imagine, conceive," and
include such things as "politics,
laws, morality, religion,
metaphysics, etc."

59. • The growth of the cinema industry was
especially dependent on the population density
of urban areas where theaters could draw
consistent crowds for repeated screenings. As
with the newspaper, book, and magazine
industries of the previous century, the structure
of the film industry and the content of films
were largely determined by the capitalist
economy within which they emerged.

60. • The Political Economy of the media concerns
the relationship between power structures
embedded in the political and economic
systems of a society, on one hand, and the
organization and content of that society's
media system, on the other.”

61. Corporations Message Consumer
Production Circulation Consumption
Political Economy

62. Corporations Message Consumer
Production Circulation Consumption
Political Economy

63. Corporations Message Consumer
Production Circulation Consumption
Political Economy

64. Assignment 3
• Who "invented” that product or media content?
• What institution has been producing it?
• Write one paragraph (150-200 words) to talk about
the creator (individual level), and another (150-200
words) about the companies and corporations
(organizational level) related to your media object.
• Chapter assignments must be written 12-point font, Times New Roman,
double-spaced with 1-inch margins and stay within the required word
count
• All assignments must be uploaded as a .doc/.docx file.

65. Vocabulary Quiz
• Define the concept or describe the nature of the
issue. What is interesting or important about his
idea? Cite at least one part from the etextbook
• Second, in a few sentences, relate the idea,
argument or issue you are developing to the media
text you’ve chosen. Provide a link to the media
text
• Finally, write at least 3 questions Pose a point of
debate about the issue. Wonder how the concept
or idea might be applied to a different media
text. Or even ask a point of clarification, if there
was something you didn’t quite understand.