Next Stop: The Future

As we progress forward with our education, our futures, and our lives, we must stop and think. How did we get here? Where are we going? We are already halfway through our semester, yet has anyone stopped to ask themselves what they have learned thus far? With all the hustle and bustle of getting assignments finished, meeting deadlines, having social relationships, and possible part-time jobs, it's tough to take it all in. I thought I would take this moment to stop and refresh our minds on some of the main points we have learned so far in Communication and Culture, Year Two.

Communication and culture are made up of main topics including: Social Class, Technology, Gender/Race, Capital/Power.

Apart from the obvious ones, we can remind ourselves that "capital" allows for us to have power over other people or things, or we could use it for our own reasons.

Kodak was a major investor in the photography business. Not only did their marketing strategy influence our day to day activities, it manipulated culture. The "say cheese" slogan has been a common phrase for years. The "say cheese" phenomenon was not created for people to use just to have good photos for memories- it was a calculated strategy through advertisements and promotions as business communications to the consumers. At the same time, culture was forever changed, to understand that the "toothy smile" represented happiness and joy.

The Social Theory of the media focuses on practical contexts of their usage. Media focuses on the consumer, and with this comes how it is easily able to change culture. If the media tells us what we should buy, then we change how we live our lives with that product and thus change how we live day to day. The media ensures that their products seem as though they are necessary for everyday life, and that their promotion of such products are easily accessible to the largest amount of consumers possible.

As we have learned for the past two years, Stuart Hall's Medium Theory outlines how the medium is crucial to the overall message of communications. It is not the message that is most important, but the means by which the messages are transmitted that most affects culture and our societies. i.e. how much effect communication channels have on us and how we are influenced by them.

The Cultural approach as the Ritual Theory, was one I had not previously been aware of. This theory entails that as consumers, we do not do our daily chores to learn new information. This theory is more philosophical than the more commonly talked about Transmissional model of communication. Ritual is more about time, and Transmissional is more about space. With the Ritual theory in mind, if we read the paper every morning, we do not read it simply to learn new things - we read it because it is habitually ingrained in us to act out our ritual of communicating. It is about the act, rather than about the information.

We also compared the World of Media to the Media World, whereby we questioned what world in which we live - are we in a world where we revolve ourselves around the media? Or are we in a world which is solely comprised of the media.

A few economic definitions we looked at were:

Oligopolies: a few major companies running a business market.

Monopoly: A single company controlling a market.

Synergy: Refers to the various strategies that a company uses to maximize profit. i.e. recycling old movies.

Vertical Integration: Process of expansion with elements that will help reduce costs i.e. McDonalds purchasing farms.

Horizontal Integration: Acquires a similar industry of business that sells related merchandise (and of similar size). i.e. McDonalds purchasing Wendys or Burger King.

Deregulation: The removal of government regulations of ownership. i.e. any company can buy out any other company.

Media Convergence: A strategy by which a company looks for financial help by getting subsidiaries to unify.


As we progress further in the semester, I hope that we are all able to take a deep breath once in a while - to look back, review, and to acknowledge what we have learned.

Lucas G.

Disney and the Beast

All companies have a target niche for the products and services that they sell to the public. Some target children, some teenagers, and others focus primarily on adults. Rarely, few companies have created multi-generational success by targeting all age groups and all types of people; Disney is a prime example of one of these corporations in relevance to the entertainment world. There are many ways that Disney has captured and maintained the attention and relationships with their audience. This blog will highlight a few of them.

Disney products have a major potential to socialize young generations. As a young child for example, the movie "Lion King" holds so many institutional characteristics. Not only does it hold a bigger picture about society,or in the movies case, "the kingdom". It unconsciously teaches children the values of the family, the school, the outsider, maturity/immaturity, growth, dangers, strangers, you name it. The movie has it all in terms of entertainment socialization. While adults pick up on these societal symbols immediately, children are absorbed in the storyline and the characters that they quickly grow to love. The events that happen in the movie instill a deep schema of how different situations work, that they will fully understand and unlock as they get older, becoming socialized by their schooling and other educational institutions. Once young children establish this relationship with a movie, that love and want in which they feel will be nurtured financially between the parents' and the company of which the movie is owned, Disney.


Not only do new audiences become turned onto old material, but Disney has teamed up with "Pixar Entertainment" to become a double successful conglomeration that puts out more new animation movies a year than ever before. All of which effect the "new-young" audiences as well as the old. In many cases, even the older audiences still watch these movies either alone or with their kids to fulfil a specific need that has been instilled by a particular product (movie). People recognize the importance of these movies in their lives and those of their children, and they become fans, and life-long supporters of the company and its products.

This weeks article about Disney, talked a lot about how the audience has a major influence in the products that they put out to the public sphere. If a movie is too gory, or too sexual, the public opinions of the audience are enough to adapt the product to their needs. This is an ingenious innovation in the competitive marketplace for animation entertainment. If there is a majority of a sampled population who agree to the movie script being too provocative or dangerous for children, Disney will re-write or re-work the script until their audience is satisfied. Once the audience is satisfied, it is guaranteed that the greater majority of their public niche will buy the product as their needs and wants for the product are met; from the very beginning. All companies feed off their public niche for ideas and innovations, but it's rare that they allow their own niche to have such a big role in creative control. Disney is the ladder, which makes it an extremely innovative and strong icon for the entertainment industry.


The Disney Corp. has successfully targeted every technological audience around the globe. This means that any person or family who own a VHS or DVD player will play host to Disney and their overwhelming advertising campaigns. Disney and Pixar as a team create and release so many new movies a year that they now have an annual standard for these releases. Their audiences now expect new releases every year which creates a strong production and consumption cycle in which financially satisfies the companies' and socially satisfies their audiences as families, individuals, kids, teenagers, and adults. Everyone else, will soon hop on the bandwagon.

Colin Johnston

Once Upon a Dream: Disney and the Audience

Disney – one of the most recognized symbols

When one thinks of Disney, it is hard not to be reminded of a positive childhood memory, or a favourite Disney character. Whether it was the fantasy of being a princess falling in love with a prince, or a certain melody that ignited the senses – there’s always a warm heart feeling that takes over.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eVaQ-jkNnY&feature=related

Disney’s main message or meaning revolves around the universally accepted themes of family, magic, happiness, and fun. It gave families meaning, dreams, and hope; and for that matter it still does. However, Disney’s audience doesn’t always interpret Disney’s message the way it was intended. The article, Disney and the World, by Janet Wasko works to define the Disney audience, discusses the ways in which Disney audiences have been studied, and explores the different audience archetypes. All of which point out the variations of audience’ interpretations and what we the audience does with the media.

Disney’s audience has always targeted the “family” in general, but have also targeted audiences of every age. From children to seniors, and from theme parks to sports events.

The ways in which the audience’s are studied are through media corporations such as ARI (Audience Research Institute) and through Academic Research. All of which helped to predict responses from the audience.

What was established were a variety of audience categories. This ranged from the Disney fanatic to the Disney cynics.

The focus is what the audience does with the media. To put this into perspective, we have the Transmission Model. This model infers that Disney (the source) sends a message through a medium whether it be a movie or a book, to the audience (the receiver), and produces some sort of effect. The effect is the way in which the audience reacts and deals with the message being received.

This brings in the encoding and decoding theme of Stuart Hall. Here, Disney encodes their message to the audience who has to decode the message. It is in the decoding process where people’s understanding may be misinterpreted (in the way that Disney wants it to be), and thus exposes the different “audiences” based on their reactions to the message.

Disney fanatics for example, fall in love with Disney and its meanings and show this love by getting 1 000 tattoos imprinted on their body - crazy I know but true. Others get so caught up in their own fantasies that they get married in Cinderella’s castle! On a more down to earth level, some audience’s engage in fan clubs, fan magazines, or on-line sites which contribute to the effects media has on the audience.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are those that see Disney as a business corporation which tends to mean they are in it solely for the money. Thus, there are those audiences who don’t give in to consuming products. Disney antagonists go to the extreme trying to get people to go against Disney’s company and its products. Some even try reinterpreting Disney by creating characters like Mickey Mouse that do the opposite of what Disney deems to be moral. This includes Mickey smoking dope and such.

Here we see that Disney tried to create a positive message that promoted good values. They were successful in the sense that Disney has a universal awareness of its intended meanings. However, there is still a percentage of the audience that disagree but are still aware of these messages.

It is refreshing to look at the audience instead of always focusing on the media and whether they are doing right or wrong. It is one thing to voice an opinion, but here we see the extremes of what audiences do with the media they consume. Whether it was embracing a way of life, or reshaping characters in a negative light. Audiences play an important role and contribute to the cycle of the media.

Stephanie P.

Greed and an Entertained Democracy

It's hard to realize the truth behind the motives of the media until someone else points them out. I like to think of myself as a relatively observant person, yet I still frequently find myself astounded at the times when I realize just how blind I can be to the inner workings and real intentions of media corporations. This was precisely the feeling I felt after reading the arguments made in Matthew McAllister's article "Television News Plugola and the Last Episode of Seinfeld".

I’ve always been somewhat savvy to the idea of media plugging future media content within existing programming. However, one thing had never seriously fazed me until I recently read about it: The idea of news broadcasting covering a story solely for the promotional value inherent in it. Having grown up in a household where entertainment news coverage simply existed as a regular staple of the news media we consumed, I was never one to think on what it meant for the news to be promoting a piece of entertainment media or writing about the stars that were involved in it.

This is precisely where the problem with the news doing so resides; that people don’t realize the reasons why a news outlet is promoting such things. In McAllister’s essay, he discusses the ways in which NBC’s promotion of the last episode of their series ‘Seinfeld’, contributed such a hyped level of anticipation as to attract as many viewers as possible. But as to what end? Profit.

It is in the profit driven state of mind that networks meant to provide news coverage do the most damage to their viewers. By promoting entertainment for the sake of profit and negating other news coverage for a lack of viewer interest, news media outlets in essence work to create a society weaned entirely on uninformed and nearly mindless content. It is from this that I have to wonder, as an someone who figured themselves for having a good handle on the motives of the media, where does that leave those who have no concern at all in such things? In short, an interest solely in profit by media conglomerates breeds a society of uninterested and self involved citizens; citizens that follow nothing but entertainment. Therefore, when Seinfeld takes precedence over international tribulation and debate, a possibility for a truly active democracy becomes nearly impossible.

A democracy thrives on the informed contributions of it's citizens. The problem today, however, resides in a lack of information to be had.

- Brady Ibanez

Are Little Monsters the same as Trekkies?

Playing off of the ideas of Star Trek re-releasing the episodes on different formats, offering new special features and additional cuts, the same can be seen in the release of music.

Take Lady Gaga for example;
Her first album, The Fame, was released October 30th, 2008 with thirteen songs. November 4th, 2008, just five days later, the first remix of her song Just Dance was released. Just like Star Trek episodes being released with different cuts – like the directors cut – a new version of the same song was released. Three weeks later, remix number two was released, and this time a second artist, Colby O’Donis, was featured as an addition.

After three releases of the same song, all different versions, the next song, LoveGame started the same rotation. Another three new versions were released between May 2009 and July 2009. This same rotation of releasing new versions of one song, brings in the revenue for the artist, and gets grabbed up and purchased immediately by the die-hard Gaga fans, just like the Trekkies did for Star Trek.

Then came her next album, The Fame Monster, released November 23rd, 2009. With it, came two versions (on iTunes at least); Deluxe and Regular. The deluxe version contained both the full-length album, as well as an additional eight songs. It wasn’t until January 26th, 2010 that those eight songs available on the deluxe record were available for purchase separately.

Now that is just the release of her music – singles, remixes, full-length CDs. Let us not forget though, about radio rotation, where callers can request a song or the weekly top 40 countdown. The remixes are played, as well as the original song, allowing for the fans to listen, as well as giving new audiences the opportunity to find new artists. Or, how about concerts – watching an artist like Lady Gaga tour the world, buying up merchandise with her face on it, using it as advertising. Or how about Magazine articles, Music Videos, DVDs of concerts and behind the scenes – everything an artist could possibly do to get a fan interested and devoted, they are doing.

Just as an artist begins to fade, they release a new single or a new CD, and the wave of popularity comes crashing all over again. It is exactly like how Star Trek re-released different versions of the same episodes. Whether it is a boxed set, a full collection of CDs, or a set of remixes, the popularity created by the fans does not die down.

As a consumer, or just insanely devoted fan, do we really need to buy every remix of a single? What about every version of a CD that is released? We can pay upwards of hundreds of dollars for a concert ticket, and we can call and request the song on the radio for free, but how far is too far? Star Trek is a great example of this, because Trekkies buy every new format (DVD, VHS) and they continue to watch reruns on TV. Music fans are the same way though, and with consumer demand, how much of change is little enough for the fans to want to buy the newest released item?

Laura Snape

An iTunes screen shot of Lady Gaga's Releases

Do consumers really make it so easy?

Are recirculation, repackaging, reversioning, recycling, and redeployment all that is needed to make a product popular? Eileen Meehan author of Star Trek, Synergy, and the Transindustrialization of Tribbles seems to think so. Meehan used Star Trek as her prime example to prove her points. When Star Trek first hit television it was a hit and eventually other stations picked it up and began rerunning episode in the hopes to attract more viewers. Needless to say it worked. As Star Trek’s popularity grew Paramount began to cash in by creating toys and other Star Trek paraphernalia. They eventually put episodes on VHS (and DVD much later) and when those sales slowed down they repackaged those VHS’s into box sets.

Later Paramount decided to change Star Trek. They made spinoffs called The Next Generation, Star Trek Enterprise, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and so on. Just as Star Trek was a spinoff of Wagon Train came the later in the Star Trek series. Star Trek’s devoted followers (known as Trekkers or Trekkies) are what made the spinoffs possible. Although none of the other series were as popular as Star Trek itself they each lasted for more than one season. And although each series had their own cast Meehan points out the similarities of each character to the original cast members of Star Trek. Each series is different but the same in certain ways. Later Star Trek box sets and DVDs were changed to include interviews with William Shatner known better as Captain Kirk and other original cast members. Some of the episodes even had host segments with different Star Trek crew members, like Captain Kirk, Dr McCoy, and Spock. Star Trek has been “recycled” a few times with little changes such as the interviews and host segments and yet Star Trek fans cannot help but by the box sets; even though the changes are minimal. Star Trek has become one of the most well known shows ever aired on television. And, if you think Star Trek is dead you are seriously mistaken.

Star Trek may not be as popular as it was in the past but you can still some of the series rerunning at odd hours of the night and on weekends. For example, this weekend I noticed an episode from The Next Generation playing on Spike TV at about one in the morning. Star has simply been moved to various time slots. It has yet to be taken off television.

However, Star Trek is not the only product that just needed a little revamping to make it popular. Take the iPod for example. With the iPod you have the iPod Mini, the iPod Nano, the iPod Shuffle, and the iPod Touch. The iPod has basically been recirculated in different forms, repackaged in different ways (each iPod has its own unique packaging). They have all been revised; they are the same but different. Other companies have tried to copy them (MP3 player) with little to no success. And, what is it about these little changes that make consumers want to trade in the iPod shuffle (in which the screen moves depending on if the iPod in vertical or horizontal) and buy the iPod touch.

As consumers do we really make it that easy for companies? Do we tell them that all they need to do is recirculate, repackage, revise, recycle, and redeploy their products and we will buy them? As consumers can you think of any other products that companies have made little changes to but are must buys in the eyes of consumers?

Ashley L

Media Concentration and Culture: The Movie and Music Industry (It's effect on consumers)

Douglas Gommery wrote in his chapter, The Centrality of Media Economics, that media began and continues to function as an economic institution. Whether it should or should not is for us to contemplate on. Furthermore, Gomery pleaded for a study of changing conditions of quality and performance; simply listing who owns the media is not enough, but one needs to understand how a form of industrial structure leads to certain corporate conduct. In Bettig and Hall's Media Concentration and Culture: The Movie and Music industry, the authors note clearly that the Movie industry works as an oligopoly; limiting choices offered to consumers. In this post I'd like to share my views on the structure of Movie and Music industry, and how, I believe, it has been functioning on only the interest of the elites who own it, and not its consumers.
We are aware of the fact that an oligopoly only allows the large media conglomerates and accommodates only the super-rich. The control of the industry, then, is in the hands of a few elites who dictate how the industry shall be run. These include the Big Six, like Bettig and Hall mention, that include Warner Brothers, Disney, Fox, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Sony. To illustrate the heightened level of their control over the whole industry, I'd like to post the incident between Paramount Picture and Variety magazine.
After Variety magazine published a rather harsh review of Paramount Picture's movie, Patriot Games, Paramount threatened to pull its advertisements from the Daily Variety magazine. Variety editors had to apologize to Paramount for the review and promised that the critic would no longer review Paramount Picture's films. This posed the question of corruption of the reviewing process, and the act of free speech.
A similar example shall be given in pertaining to intellectual property, which Bettig and Hall discuss later in the chapter in light of the Movie and Music industry. The example is of The Phanton Edit - an independent fan edit project taken up by Mike J. Nichols, where he attempted to edit George Lucas' The Phantom Menace. The intention of the project was to edit some elements of the original film and make a stronger version of it. The project received acclaim from media such as The NPR, PBS and BBC. George Lucas, however, disapproved of the project, warning fans that the edit was infringement. Hence, this limited the act of freedom of expression.
What you see above is what you'll expect from limited competition. An oligopoly structure is designed for the best interest of the owners and not the consumers. U.S Bureau of Labor in 1998 conducted a statistic which showed that consumer's out of pocket expenses for entertainment and reading materials is roughly equal to that of health care. When the Movie and Music industry will be aware of stats such as this, why wouldn't they try to take maximum advantage of it. Overpriced movie tickets, limited choices and movies of debatable quality are characteristics of an industry that functions under an oligopoly.

Maddy G.

Media Concentration

Over time media has become one of the most influential means of conveying messages that is reaching millions of North American citizens'. Media concentration refers to both the number of people or groups who manage the media and the messages sent as well as the number of people or groups in which media affects. I feel that as the media holds such a high impact on the general public that those in the later description of media concentration are not reaping the benefits. A relatively small number of people and/or organizations are managing the media compared to the millions of people who are affected. I feel that in the broad spectrum the media holds so much power for such a little number in control when manipulating such large sums of people. I feel that media has taken over power of many people’s viewpoints, knowledge and outlooks on reality, and freedom. Those in control of media can basically choose and direct to their discretion. Many times viewers' are tricked into what they are viewing by techniques those in power use to gain the control. If the media was not as influential as it has become and did not have a “brain washing” affect on its viewers’, media concentration could be advantageous. Media concentration seems to be used as a tool of manipulation, control and power over those less aware and educated. Therefore, the general public in North American are losing its sense of self to the millions of orchestrated messages being delivered.

Hillary Callan