This document discusses different types of old and new media. It provides statistics about social media usage, such as the number of Facebook users and tweets per day. The document also examines the power and influence of media, such as how radio was used for propaganda during WWII and how some media has portrayed gender and racial issues. It emphasizes that most of what people know comes from mediated sources and stresses the importance of being critical of media by analyzing the agenda and viewpoint of its creators.

1. Critical Media
How we
know what
we know?

2. Critical Media
Firstly lets explore the different types of
media: Old media.
• Print media
• Motion pictures
• Sound recordings
• Broadcast media
Which could include cave drawings,
speech, smoke signals, letters, books
(Ott & Mack, 2014).

3. New media
• Internet
• Mobile phones
• Social networking
• Digital television
• E-books
• Photography

4. Old media
Historically mass media was not very
portable.
• If you wanted to see a film, you had
to go to the theater.
• The size and weight of books made
mobility limited, you had to carry
then around and transport them to
various countries (Ott & Mack, 2014).

5. New Media – social media
• How big is networking and social
media?

6. Social Media Today
• In one day 700,000 people will join
Facebook.
• Facebook uses share, like and tag 1
billion pieces of information a day.
• The virtual game Farmville will sell 1
million in digital farming equipment
in a day.
• 65 Million users access facebook
through their phones.

7. Social Media Today
• In one day 900,000 iphones and
160,000 android devices will be sold.
• Twitter has 64 million tweets a day.
• Utube Is the second most used
search engine in the world.
• Utube has 24 hours of video
uploaded every minute.

8. The power of the media
- What impact does it have on our daily
lives?

9. Before television, radio was the way everyone found
out what was happening in the rest of the world.
This was highlighted in World War II
ORT AND IT HAS BEEN ARGUED THAT IT WAS THE NAZIS
WHO PIONEERED THE USE OF WHAT WAS STILL A
RELATIVELY NEW TECHNOLOGY. A FEW MONTHS AFTER
THE BREAK OUT OF WORLD WAR II, GERMAN

10. The radio was an important tool of the Nazi propaganda effort
and it has been argued that it was the Nazis who pioneered the
use of what was still a relatively new technology. A few months
after the break out of World War II, German propagandists were
transmitting no less than eleven hours a day of programs,
offering most of them in English as well (Edward, 1969).

11. On Sunday, October 30, 1938, millions of radio listeners
were shocked when radio news alerts announced the arrival
of Martians. They panicked when they learned of the
Martians' ferocious and seemingly unstoppable attack on
Earth. Many ran out of their homes screaming while others
packed up their cars and fled.
Though what the radio listeners heard was a portion of
Orson Welles' adaptation of the well-known book, War of the
Worlds by H. G. Wells, many of the listeners believed what
they heard on the radio was real (Rosenburg, 2014).

12. If you were watching the news and
the presenter said a major world war
had just broken out - would you
doubt it?

13. The power of the media
Gender issues
• In the 1960’s Betty Friedan looked at
what women’s magazines were
telling woman. They reinforced
traditional gender differences and
inequalities (Mendes and Carter,
2008).

14. The power of the media
Gender issues
• Television portrayed women in a
narrow range of roles which tend to
revolve around domestic settings
and as subordinate (Tuchman,
1978).

15. Racial Issues
• Information technology has
traditionally been the instrument of
the powerful. Newspapers, radio,
television ad the internet are used
worldwide to incite racial and ethnic
hatred and justifies the denial of
human rights to millions of poor
people ( Njubi, 2007).

16. Racial Issues
• Films from the United States ad
Europe demonized Africans and
justified colonial oppression (Njubi,
2007).
• Radio stations controlled by colonial
governments promoted white
supremacy by disseminating racist
propaganda (Njubi, 2007).

17. Racial Issues
“In the 21st century the capacity to
communicate will almost certainly be a
human right”
Nelson Mandela
(Njubi, 2007).

18. What I know
• There are some things we know
through someone or something such
as a parent or friend, teacher,
museum, textbook, photograph, film,
television, or on the internet.
• This type of information is
MEDIATED meaning it has come to
us via some indirect channel or
medium (Ott & Mack, 2014).

19. What I know
Therefore the majority of what I know
is mediated?

20. Critical Media
• Karl R. Popper (1962) said we must
gain and differentiate knowledge by
testing solutions to problems. He
called this method as critical,
because scholars questioned the
works of others (Fuchs, 2011).
We can do the same with media?

21. Information overload and
discernment?
‘The vast banks of knowledge,
information and databases on virtually
any topic that are available to anyone,
anytime anywhere – mean there is a
critical need to develop skills with which
to discern misinformation, disinformation,
truth from fiction, trustworthy from
unauthenticated information’ (Burbules &
Callister, 2000).

22. The good news
Power can work both ways
The media are not only structures of
domination and fields for the exertion
of domination but also potential tools
that are used for struggling against
domination and organizing and
communicating protest (Fuch, 2011).

23. Critical Media
So how can I be critical?
Analyze the information presented in
the media and ask:
Who has created this piece of media
information and what is the agenda (if any)?
What political, cultural and social viewpoint
is the creator coming from?
Who stands to benefit from this information?
What potentially is the other viewpoint?

24. References
• A day in the life of social media by DBACH Healthcare retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iReY3W9ZkLU
• Burbles, N., & Callister, T. (2000). Watch IT: The risky promises and
promising risks of new information technologies in education. Found in
Luke, C. (2007). As seen on TV or was that my phone? New media
literacy. Policy Futures in Education. Volume 5 (1), p 50 -58.
• Chester, Edward (1969). Radio, Television, and American Politics. Sheed
and Ward: New York. p. 342.
• Fuchs, C. (2011). Routledge advances in sociology: Foundations of
critical media and information studies. Florence, USA: Routledge.
• Mendes, K., & Carter, C. (2008). Feminist and gender media studies: A
critical overview. Sociology Compass 2 (6), p 1701 – 1718.
• Njubi, F. (2007). Critical arts: South-North cultural and media studies.
Retrieved from www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcrc20

25. References
• Ott, B., & Mack, R. (2014). Critical media studies: An introduction. Second
Edition. John Wiley and sons.
• Rosenburg, J. (2014). War of the worlds radio broadcast causes panic.
Retrieved from
http://history1900s.about.com/od/1930s/a/warofworlds.htm
• Tuchman. (1978). The symbolic annihilation of women by the mass
media. New York: Oxford University Press.