Turn Me On, Dead Media

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 531-551
Author(s):  
Jacob Smith
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Recorded Sound ◽  
Conservative Christian ◽  
History Of ◽  
Iconic Status

In an era of CD-Rs and MP3 sound files, the vinyl phonograph record has attained iconic status as the quintessential old analog media form. An analysis of the theory and practice of “backmasking” reveals how a discourse of the occult “re-newed” the old medium of recorded sound one hundred years after its invention. Little scholarly attention has been paid to debates in the 1980s about the alleged presence of backmasking: the term given to the process whereby messages were thought to be placed in popular phonograph records such that their full meaning could be discovered only when the record was played in reverse. The backmasking controversy provides an example of the re-enchantment of an old medium, not through the work of avant-garde artists but conservative Christian preachers, anticult lecturers, and high school teachers, whose antimedia discourse was culturally productive far beyond their local origins or narrow intentions. To appreciate the multiple sources and unintended results of the backmasking panic, this article makes use of scholarly work on new media, the sociology of religion, the history of occult discourses surrounding the electronic media, debates about subliminal advertising, and the cultural history of recorded sound. By thus placing backmasking within these various historical and cultural frames, we are better able to understand how vernacular media theory and the grassroots public performances of traveling showmen constructed a sense of astonishment often associated with media technologies only when they are new.

Filthy Material

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Forster
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Media ◽  
Twentieth Century Literature ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Literary Value ◽  
Radclyffe Hall ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media

Modernist literature is inextricable from the history of obscenity. The trials of such figures as James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and Radclyffe Hall loom large in accounts of twentieth-century literature. Filthy Material: Modernism and the Media of Obscenity reveals the ways that debates about obscenity and literature were shaped by changes in the history of media. The emergence of film, photography, and new printing technologies shaped how “literary value” was understood, altering how obscenity was defined and which texts were considered obscene. Filthy Material rereads the history of modernist obscenity to discover the role played by technological media in debates about obscenity. The shift from the intense censorship of the early twentieth century to the effective “end of obscenity” for literature at the middle of the century was not simply a product of cultural liberalization but also of a changing media ecology. Filthy Material brings together media theory and archival research to offer a fresh account of modernist obscenity with novel readings of works of modernist literature. It sheds new light on figures at the center of modernism’s obscenity trials (such as Joyce and Lawrence), demonstrates the relevance of the discourse of obscenity to understanding figures not typically associated with obscenity debates (such as T. S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis), and introduces new figures to our account of modernism (such as Norah James and Jack Kahane). It reveals how modernist obscenity reflected a contest over the literary in the face of new media technologies.

Latina/os in Media: Representation, Production, and Consumption

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel G. Avilés-Santiago
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Media ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
History Of ◽  
Streaming Services ◽  
Technological Means ◽  
Radio Industry

Developments in contemporary Latina/os media are the result not only of an exponentially growing Latina/o population in the United States but also of the synergy between transformations in the global political economy and the emergence of new media platforms for production, distribution, and consumption. To reflect upon the emergence of the industry is to consider the politics of the labeling of the Latina/o community and the eventual configuration of a market audience. It also requires a confrontation with the cultural history of representations and stereotypes of Latina/os, particularly in radio, TV, film, and the internet, and the transnational aesthetics and dynamics of media produced by and/or for Latina/os in the United States. If the notion of media revolves around a technological means of communication, it also encompasses the practices and institutions from within which the Latina/o communities are imagined, produced, and consumed. At the start of the 21st century, the idea of Latina/os in media revolved around a handful of Latina/o stars in Hollywood who often performed stereotypical representations, a racialized and marginal Spanish-language radio industry, and two Spanish television networks, Univision and Telemundo. A more complex constellation of representations has evolved in both mainstream and Spanish-language media, among them new platforms for production and resistance, including social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat), radio podcasts and streaming services (e.g., Hulu and Netflix), and a more active and engaged audience that consumes media in Spanish, English, and even Spanglish.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Institutions ◽  
Public Instruction ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
The Revolution

The conclusion discusses how re-examining the ‘education question’ in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France offers new insight to the cultural dynamics at work in the political upheavals of late-eighteenth century France. It argues that recognizing the practical nature of many of the debates over education – even into the radical period of the Revolution – helps us to situate revolutionary politics within its historical moment and to better understand how participatory and representative politics were pursued after 1789. The conclusion situates the pursuit of both public instruction and representative government within the broader legacy of the Revolution, a legacy that has shaped modern political culture in lasting and fundamental ways. It also argues that approaching the political and cultural history of revolutionary France through the interplay of ideas about education and practical efforts to establish new institutions (political and pedagogical alike) suggests new ways to think about the relationship between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution and about the legacy of the Revolution for the theory and practice of democratic politics ever since.

scholarly journals The Structural Rationalism and the sources of Brazilian Modern Architecture: method, de nitions and research potential

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Puppi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Organic Unity ◽  
Relevant Today ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Architecture ◽  
Xix Century

The research has two main objectives: rst, expand the knowled- ge of the sources of the theory and practice of Brazilian modern architecture and, second, contribute to the consolidation of the cultural history of architecture in Brazil. Studying the structural rationalism as source of the Brazilian modern architecture does not only mean to deepen the knowledge already in progress on the latter, but also to apply the cultural history method to the stu- dy of the history of architecture in Brazil. For the recent research about the structural rationalism bene ted from the cultural history method and is part of the new architectural history of the XIX century, elaborated since 1990, approximately. In this context, the very de nition of structural rationalism is ampli ed and dee- pened. Instead of simply meaning a relation of cause and e ect between structure and architecture in which the structure is one of the architecture’s purposes, the structural rationalism is now understood as part of the new dynamic and organic conception of the architecture that emerges in the XIX century, for which, particularly, the structure is the means capable to fully generate the organic unity of the form. In this perspective, demonstrate that the structural rationalism is one of the sources, and more precisely one of the greatest sources of Brazilian modern architec- ture, not only permit to deepen the knowledge of the theoretical assumptions, but also the formal qualities of this architecture. As well as, consequently, the more general matters as the composi- tion method and the architecture’s cultural role that are relevant today and ever to the theory and the practice of the architecture. 

scholarly journals System, technologia i wernakularne innowacje. Piotr Sitarski, Maria B. Garda, Krzysztof Jajko, Nowe media w PRL, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, Łódź 2020, ss. 250

2021 ◽  
pp. 470-477
Author(s):  
Mateusz Felczak
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Diffusion Of Innovations ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Diffusion Of Innovations Theory ◽  
Satellite Television ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rich Data ◽  
Political Economic

System, Technology and Vernacular Innovations. Piotr Sitarski, Maria B. Garda, Krzysztof Jajko, Nowe media w PRL, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, Łódź 2020, ss. 250. This review concerns New Media Behind the Iron Curtain: Cultural History of Video, Microcomputers and Satellite Television in Communist Poland (original title: New Media in Polish People’s Republic), a book co-authored by Piotr Sitarski, Maria B. Garda, and Krzysztof Jajko. The publication offers a unique insight into vernacular usages of new technology (videocassette recorders, microcomputers and satellite TV) during the last decades of the Communist rule in Poland. Making the diffusion of innovations theory its basic approach to the subject, the book grounds its claims using rich data including interviews, photographs and documents from the analyzed era. New Media presents a comprehensive, case study-focused approach to the analysis of political, economic and social contexts concerning the dissemination, appropriation and application of technological innovations by individual users.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
pp. xxiv-30
Author(s):  
Michael J. MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Rhetorical Studies

This introduction provides an overview of the aims, audience, structure, and content of The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies. In addition to defining rhetoric and mapping the field of rhetorical studies, it provides a historical context for the contemporary resurgence of interest in rhetoric through a discussion of new methods of textual and historical analysis, the modern expansion of the field of rhetoric, and novel forms of rhetorical theory and practice made possible by new media technologies. The introduction also provides detailed summaries of all 60 chapters, arranged thematically to offer a topical survey or “snapshot” of the Handbook as a whole. In general, the introduction argues that rhetoric, far from being moribund, is a protean, multifaceted art that plays a key role in myriad academic disciplines (drama, literature, philosophy, etc.) and fields of social practice (law, politics, education, etc.).

scholarly journals The role of pedagogical historiography in forming pedagogical knowledge

2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-273
Author(s):  
Natasa Vujisic-Zivkovic
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Social History ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
History Of Education ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Pedagogical Knowledge ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research And Education

This paper discuses the role of pedagogical historiography in forming pedagogical knowledge, both from the aspect of history and from the aspect of the present status of this discipline. Our aim is to observe the problems of pedagogical historiography, as a scientific and teaching discipline, in the context of forming of pedagogical knowledge. The process of transformation of heuristic function of the history of pedagogy is analyzed - from the traditional approach which emphasizes its role in forming pedagogical culture to the orientation of historical research and education in pedagogy towards theoretical and professional knowledge. The development of history of pedagogy as a scientific discipline is mostly observed through three phases: the first, focused on research of the development of pedagogical ideas and/or school system, lasted until the 1960s, when it was replaced by social history of education, while today it is mostly spoken about the 'cultural history of education'. The evolution of pedagogical historiography is also followed by the changes in its relation towards theory and practice of education, which is especially dealt with in this paper. In the conditions of radical changes in epistemology of social sciences and university reform, pedagogical historiography faces the question of its own relevance.

A Media Interpretation of the Negative Impact of Cloud Technologies

2016 ◽  
pp. 403-420
Author(s):  
Michael S. Tang ◽  
Arunprakash T. Karunanithi
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Media Communication ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cloud Technologies

This chapter presents a media studies interpretation of the impact of Cloud communication technologies on traditional academic achievement. According to social media critics following the “medium is the message” theory of Marshall McLuhan, the hidden “message” in the new Cloud communication education technologies conflicts with the old message of the printed textbook, the traditional medium of communication in education since the printing press in the 16th and 17th centuries. The chapter begins with a brief history of media technologies in education to gain understanding into the nature of this conflict and follows with a review of research and studies that document the conflict's cause and consequences with the conclusion that a major factor in the proliferation of any new media communication technology is its commercial value. Moreover, because new technologies in education are driven by commercial interests, its pedagogical value becomes secondary resulting in what social media and other critics view as the dumbing down of the American student. These social media critics contend that not only have American students been declining intellectually, computer technologies, including the Cloud Internet communication technologies are the direct cause of this decline, raising the question, “is education technology an oxymoron?” Given this analysis of media communication technologies' impact on education, the authors then offer a possible way out of the current situation by proposing a more human factors approach towards Cloud technologies based on constructivist educational and cognitive styles theory.

scholarly journals The Logic of Filtering

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melle Jan Kromhout
Keyword(s):  
Media Technologies ◽  
Recorded Sound ◽  
Specific Analysis ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Sound Media ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
The Way

This book traces the profound impact of technical media on the sound of music, asking: How do media technologies shape sound? How does this affect music? And how did it change what we listen for in music? Based on the information theoretical proposition that all transmission channels introduce noise and distortion, the argument accounts for the fact that technologically reproduced music is inherently shaped by the technologies that enable its reproduction. The media archaeological assessment of this noise of sound media developed in the book draws from a wide range of sources, both theoretical and historical, conceptual and technical. Together, they show that noise should not be understood as unwanted by-effect but instead plays a foundational role in shaping the sonic contours of technologically reproduced music. Over the course of five chapters, the book sketches a broad history of the problem of noise in sound recording, looks at specific analog and digital noise-related technologies, traces the ideal of sonic purity back to key developments in nineteenth-century acoustics, and develops an analysis of the close interrelation between noise and the temporality of sound. This relation, it argues, is central to the way in which recorded sound and music resonate with listeners. Ultimately, this media-specific analysis of the noise of sound media thereby greatly enriches our understanding of the way in which they changed and continue to change the sonorous qualities of music, thus offering a new perspective on the interaction between music, media, and listeners.

scholarly journals The 'Bollywoodization' of Popular Indian Visual Culture: A Critical Perspective

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 277-285
Author(s):  
Keval Joseph Kumar
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Indian Cinema ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
Visual Style ◽  
Worldwide Web ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hindi Cinema ◽  
Classical Traditions

The roots of popular visual culture of contemporary India can be traced to the  mythological films which D. G. Phalke provided audiences during the decades of the ‘silent’ era (1912-1934).  The ‘talkies era of the 1930s ushered in the ‘singing’ /musical genre which together with Phalke’s visual style, remains the hallmark of Bollywood cinema. The history of Indian cinema is replete with films made in other genres and styles (e.g. social realism, satires, comedies, fantasy, horror, stunt) in the numerous languages of the country; however, it’s the popular Hindi cinema (now generally termed ‘Bollywood’) that has dominated national Indian cinema and its audiovisual culture and hegemonized the entire film industry as well as other popular technology-based art forms including the press, radio, television,  music, advertising, the worldwide web,  the social media, and telecommunications media. The form and substance of these modern art forms, while adapting to the demands of the new media technologies, continued to be rooted in the visual arts and practices of folk and classical traditions of earlier times.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document