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.