Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Toscano, Aaron, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Conference Presentations
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • February 1st: Reflection on Workplace Messages
    • January 11th: More Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Audience & Purpose
    • January 23rd: Résumés and Cover Letters
      • Duty Format for Résumés
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • January 25th: More on Résumés and Cover Letters
    • January 30th: Achieving a Readable Style
      • Euphemisms
      • Prose Practice for Next Class
      • Prose Revision Assignment
      • Revising Prose: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Good
      • Sentence Clarity
    • January 9th: Introduction to the Class
    • Major Assignments
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • August 24th: Introduction to the Class
    • August 31st: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2022)
      • Rhetoric of Fear
    • November 16th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Finding Dominant Rhetorical Appeals
    • November 2nd: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • November 30th: Words and Word Classes
    • November 9th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • October 12th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 19th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 26th: Stylistic Variations
    • October 5th: Midterm Exam
    • September 14th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 21st: Coordination and Subordination
    • September 28th: Form and Function
    • September 7th: Sentence Patterns
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 12th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 19th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • April 26th:  Feminisms and Rhetorics
    • April 5th: Knoblauch. Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • February 15th: Isocrates (Part 2)
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 8th: Isocrates (Part 1)-2nd Half of Class
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 15th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • March 1st: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • March 22nd: Mary Wollstonecraft
    • March 29th: Second Wave Feminist Rhetoric
    • May 3rd: Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • ENGL/COMM/WRDS: The Rhetoric of Fear
    • January 10th: Introduction to the Class
    • January 17th: Scapegoats & Conspiracies
    • January 24th: The Rhetoric of Fear and Fallacies Part 1
    • January 31st: Fallacies Part 2 and American Politics Part 1
    • Major Assignments
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • LBST 2213-110: Science, Technology, and Society
    • August 22nd: Science and Technology from a Humanistic Perspective
    • August 24th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • August 29th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • August 31st: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • December 5th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • November 14th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 16th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 21st: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 28th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 30th: Violence in Video Games
    • November 7th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes Ch. 1-17
    • November 9th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes, Ch. 18-26
    • October 12th: Lies Economics Tells
    • October 17th: Brief Histories of Medicine, Salerno, and Galen
    • October 19th: Politicizing Science and Medicine
    • October 24th: COVID-19 Facial Covering Rhetoric
    • October 26th: Wells, H. G. Time Machine. Ch. 1-5
    • October 31st: Wells, H. G. The Time Machine Ch. 6-The End
    • October 3rd: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 12th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 19th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Prefaces and Ch. 1
    • September 26th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 2
    • September 28th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • September 7th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 5 and 6
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021)
    • April 13th: Virtually ‘Real’ Environments
    • April 20th: Rhetoric/Composition Defines New Media
    • April 27th: Sub/Cultural Politics, Hegemony, and Agency
    • April 6th: Capitalist Realism
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
    • Major Assignments for New Media (Spring 2021)
    • March 16th: Identity Politics
    • March 23rd: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • March 2nd: Foundational Thinkers in Cultural Studies
    • March 30th: Hyperreality
    • March 9th: Globalization & Postmodernism
    • May 4th: Wrapping Up The Semester
      • Jodi Dean “The The Illusion of Democracy” & “Communicative Capitalism”
      • Social Construction of Sexuality
  • Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • Isaac Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • Oral Presentations
    • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire
  • Video Games & American Culture
    • April 14th: Phallocentrism
    • April 21st: Video Games and Neoliberalism
    • April 7th: Video Games and Conquest
    • Assignments for Video Games & American Culture
    • February 10th: Aesthetics and Culture
    • February 17th: Narrative and Catharsis
    • February 24th: Serious Games
    • February 3rd: More History of Video Games
    • January 13th: Introduction to the course
    • January 20th: Introduction to Video Game Studies
    • January 27th: Games & Culture
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
    • March 24th: Realism, Interpretation(s), and Meaning Making
    • March 31st: Feminist Perspectives and Politics
    • March 3rd: Risky Business?

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 255F
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021) » February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media

February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media

Plan for the day

  • Assignments Page (Finally got that up…)
  • Syllabus Update: No Leading Class Discussion Assignment
    • Weekly Participation Questions
    • This week’s: How do you consume news?
    • Participation is now 25% of your grade
  • More on Prevailing Cultural Attitudes
  • The Public Sphere
  • Democracy and Media

Over all goal: Recognize the value (capitalism) underlying American culture. Male-dominated public sphere privileges profits: if it doesn’t make money, it’s not real work. Political preferences are irrelevant because media (specifically soundbite media on TV and non-public radio*) create/capture audiences for marketing products. Work is exchanging labor for wages, which then allow citizens–trained by ideology–the freedom to consume.

Feminized work is devalued not only because of systemic sexism but also because it doesn’t make money. Culturally, women are considered adept at nurturing, assisting, and, of course, childrearing roles.

*Yes, I’m biased, but Guglielmo Marconi pursued the wireless because of it’s commercial potential, so, if we’re being accurate, radio technology’s history is enmeshed in profit. The public radio model does use corporate sponsors and has a similar format for profit radio (news shows and segments), but its purpose is more to inform than to create constituencies to “get behind” a topic or policy.

Definitions for Discussion

Often when dealing with philosophy, rhetoric, and theory, the terms we use aren’t universally understood across disciplines. Meaning(s) is (are) entwined with word usage and history. Therefore, dictionary definitions are often inadequate to grasp the meaning of a term fully. The definitions below are to guide you in ways of thinking about culture as opposed to regurgitating in casual conversation.

  • Critical Theory: [defintion not in the reading] often refered to as “theory,” an umbrella term for the many analyses of culture; examining society and culture and their products to understand how culture mediates a society’s ideology. Uncovering the ideology of a culture.
  • Critical Rhetoric: this perspective is in contradiction to an assumed universalist sense of reason in the formation of a discursively constructed reality. “The perspective is useful both for the political speaker, as heuristic in composing discourse, and for the rhetorical critic or audience member responding to that discourse” (Sloane, Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, p. 619). Traditional rhetoric (and all speech acts) persuades if both sender and receiver agree upon logic and reason–they’re “universal.” Critical rhetoric recognizes contexts and situations.
  • Late welfare-state capitalism: a term for a late and post-industrial economy where businesses provide “welfare” type benefits (retirement, health care, insurance, etc.) to employees.
    • Please show me that you’re able to point to a contemporary example of this…

Jürgen Habermas “The Public Sphere” (1964)

Jürgen Habermas is still alive and well at 91.

  • Public sphere: not the government, not a crowd, not the press (per se) but where public opinion is formed and (in theory) all citizens may contribute and be informed by this sphere.
  • p. 51: “Today, newspapers and magazines, radio and television are the media of the public sphere.”
  • p. 50: “…public opinion can by definition come into existence only when a reasoning public is presupposed.”
  • p. 53: “…the newspaper publisher…changed from a vendor of recent news to a dealer in public opinion.”
  • p. 54 (special interests): “The public sphere, which must now mediate [special interest] demands, becomes a field for the competition of interests.”
  • p.55 (paraphrase): publicity is not an invitation for critical debate on a subject; instead, it’s to get people behind an issue.

If you have HBO Max, I highly suggest watching Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957). We’ve known for a long time that the media is influential…and superficial.

Fraser, Nancy. “What’s Critical about Critical theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender?” (1991)

Fraser doesn’t directly react to Habermas’s article “The Public Sphere” but a later work. However, the discussion of the “public sphere” is germane (pun intended) to Fraser’s critique of the underlying masculine embodiment of these spheres.

  • Marx’s definition derived from his letter to Arnold Ruge: “Critical Theory [is] ‘the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age’” (p. 253). {Note: the online translation is different–scroll to the very bottom.}
  • “A critical theory…frames its research in the light of contemporary social movements with which it has partisan though not uncritical identification” (p. 253).
  • Material reproduction: “societies must reproduce themselves materially; they must successfully regulate the metabolic exchange of groups of biological individuals with a nonhuman, physical environment and with other social systems” (p. 254).
  • Symbolic reproduction: “societies must reproduce themselves symbolically; they must maintain and transmit to new members the linguistically elaborated norms and patterns of interpretation that are constitutive of social identities” (p. 254)
  • Childrearing falls outside of Habermas’ social-theoretical framework: “childrearing is not per se symbolic reproduction activity; it is equally and at the same time material reproduction activity. It is a ‘dual-aspect’ activity” (p. 255).
    • Therefore, children must be born (material reproduction) in appropriate ways so as not to be a social burden and must be socialized (symbolic reproduction) to abide by the norms of the dominant culture.
  • Socially integrated action contexts: “…are those in which different agents coordinate their actions with one another by means of an explicit or implicit intersubjective consensus about norms, values, and ends” (p. 255).
    • p. 255: “[The classification of childrearing as symbolic and other work as material reproduction] could be used…to legitimate the institutional separation of childrearing from paid work,” which is “a linchpin of modern forms of women’s subordination.”
    • Similar statement on p. 259: “…linchpin of modern women’s subordination…”
  • System-integrated action contexts: “…are those in which the actions of different agents are coordinated by the functional interlacing of unintended consequences, while each individual action is determined by self-interested, utility-maximizing calculations in the “media” of money and power” (p. 255-256).
  • Capitalist “exchanges occur against a horizon of intersubjectively shared meanings and norms” (p. 256).
  • p. 257: “Habermas’s categorical divide between the “private sphere of the lifeworld” and the “private economic system” faithfully mirrors the institutional separation of family and official economy, household and paid workplace, in male-dominated, capitalist societies.”
    • “It directs attention away from the fact that the household, like the paid workplace, is a site of labor, albeit of unremunerated and often unrecognized labor…”
    • “…women are assigned distinctively feminine, service-oriented and often sexualized occupations. And it fails to focalize the that fact that in both spheres women are subordinate to men.”
  • To Fraser, the capitalist context is not free of ideology (although, really, nothing is non-ideological) because it is maintained by cultural assumptions and social practices–there is a marketplace that requires participant acceptance. Ask yourself, “Why does the latest HDTV–brand new–cost the same as when the previous HDTV model came out?”

Public and Private Spheres

  • Private sphere: “the nuclear family” (p. 257).
  • Public sphere: “the space of political deliberation” (p.257).
  • Habermas separates family from economy (p. 257).
  • Fraser’s main argument: “[Habermas] fails to focalize the fact that in both spheres women are subordinate to men” (p. 257).
  • Family units are sites of coercion and male dominated (p. 257).
  • Normatively secured forms of socially integrated action: “…are actions on the basis of a conventional, prereflective, taken-for-granted consensus about values and ends, consensus rooted in the precritical internalization of cultural tradition” (p. 258).
  • Communicatively secured forms of socially integrated action: “…are actions coordinated by explicit, reflectively achieved consensus, consensus reached by unconstrained discussion under conditions of freedom, equality, and fairness” (p. 258).
  • Fraser’s linchpin of modern women’s subordination: “the separation of the official economic sphere from the domestic sphere and the enclaving of childrearing from the rest of social labor” (p. 259).
    • Let’s complicate Fraser’s argument. If Habermas is a product of patriarchal thinking that ignores (intentionally separates) women’s contributions to society, why does patriarchy insist on heteronormative relationships?

Patriarchy or just Androcentric Bias Pervades Capitalism

Fraser is critiquing Habermas’ social-framework theory not because she thinks he’s dead wrong but because it doesn’t allow for a feminist-centered perspective, which would change the capitialist system. Habermas is socialist-leaning, and Fraser seems to be also. This article is not a simple “for” or “against” discussion. Fraser is pointing out that male domination is so entrenched in the capitalist system that any critique must be able to confront Patriarchy. She isn’t explicitly advocating the solution; instead, she’s devising a way to approach a feminist conscious critique of capitalism and the superstructures built up in support of the system.

  • p. 262: “In Habermas’s view, citizenship means participation in political debate and public opinion formation.”
  • p. 262: “…another aspect of citizenship not discussed by [Habermas] is….the soldiering aspect of citizenship, the conception of the citizen as the defender of the polity and protector of those–women, children, the elderly–who allegedly cannot protect themselves.”
  • p. 263: “…male dominance is intrinsic rather than accidental to classical capitalism, since the institutional structure of the social formation is actualized by means of gendered roles.”
  • p. 264: “…some form of dedifferentiation of unpaid childrearing and other work is required….as long as the citizen role is defined to encompass death-dealing soldiering but not life-fostering childrearing, as long as it is tied to male-dominated modes of dialogue, then it, too, will remain incapable of including women fully.”
  • What does Fraser mean when she claims that “work[ers] are compensated by enhanced commodity consumption” and “there is a major decline in the importance of the citizen role as journalism becomes mass media, political parties are bureaucratized, and participation is reduced to occasional voting” (p. 265).
  • p. 266: “Decolonization encompasses three things:
    • …the removal of system-integrated mechanisms from symbolic reproduction spheres;
    • …the replacement of (some) normatively secured contexts by communicatively achieved ones;
    • …the development of new, democratic institutions capable of asserting lifeworld control over state and (official) economic systems.”
  • p. 267: “welfare state capitalism does inflate the consumer role and deflate the citizen role, reducing the latter essentially to voting–and, we should add, also to soldiering.”
    • “[Habermas] overlooks that it is overwhelmingly women who are the clients of the welfare state.”
  • p. 268: “Welfare measures do have a positive side insofar as they reduce women’s dependence on an individual male breadwinner. But they also have a negative side insofar as they substitute dependence on a patriarchal and androcentric state bureaucracy.”
  • p. 272: “Habermas’s account….fails to theorize the systemic, money- and power-mediated character of male dominance in the domestic sphere of the late-capitalist lifeworld.”

Her point is that gender discussions need to be a part of any critique in order to uncover “the evil of dominance and subordination” (p. 273) intrinsic to both the public and private spheres.

  • While one could simply belabor the point that capitalism rules because capitalism rules, that would be utterly unproductive. The point of our inquiry should be to recognize the tenets of a system under which we live.
  • What is the division of labor? Are there male jobs and female jobs?
  • What is a goal of Fraser repeatedly mentioning that childrearing is unpaid?
  • What are the ways families socialize their members into the capitalist system?
  • What are some attributes of capitalism, especially gendered ones, that pervade the media? In other words, because the media are a product of the culture from which it comes, what marks it as capitalist?
  • Is “decolonization”–removing the systemic biases from capitalism–possible?
  • How does the media reinforce, thwart, or ignore the systemic bias of capitalism?

Thomas Jefferson et. al.

I included this reading in order to have us revisit the formal document that establishes (sure, not totally) the United States of America.

  • People should be able to govern based on the consent of those governed (in fact, they are guaranteed this right by nature).
  • After the preamble: notice the listing of abuses. There aren’t heavy details, but there are many abuses the writers point to for why the colonies ought to separate from Britain.
  • In essence, the listing is a group of sound bites that can be used to gather support for rebellion.
  • The Natives: notice the one group (besides the British) that the writers “call out” as particularly aggressive. They seem like…

Our Public Sphere

What is our public sphere? In other words, where is public opinion formed and what mediates that communication? This is a perfect time to consider our class’s definition of rhetoric: how meaning is communicated through discourse, texts, media, etc.

But isn’t reality reality?

  • More on our public sphere–time permitting
  • Video for this week’s discussion prompt on Canvas: 24-hour news comment from Jon Stewart (10/12/2009)

David Mervin: “The News Media and Democracy in the United States.” 1998.

I don’t post a set number of notes on each article. These notes are to guide your thinking but not replace your own reading of the material.

This article was published over 20 years ago and doesn’t consider Internet news, but the point to come away with is how powerful the American media are and the perceived impact on democracy. A new conversation didn’t just come about after online news…you’ll notice some things haven’t changed…

Values apparent in the article

  • Informed citizenry (p. 7): “A vigorous democracy cannot settle for a passive citizenry that merely chooses leaders and then forgets entirely about politics….Some kind of public deliberation is required that involves the citizenry as a whole” (Page, 1996).
    • Consider this in the context of Curran, Fenton, and Freedman’s discussion of slactivism and clicktivism, where users quickly like or donate and then leave the conversation.
  • Television as less intellectual effort (p. 9): “As Neil Postman has argued coming to grips with political news presented in print requires a far greater degree of intellectual effort than watching television” (1985).
    • I’m not sure this is so straightforward, but I have plenty of evidence that multitasking means you do “simultaneous” tasks worse than if you focused attention on a single task.
    • Yes, reading is an example.
  • (p. 9): “The primary purpose of television is for entertainment.”
  • infotainment: presenting “news” like entertainment not to be informative.
    • I use quotes around news because, in contrast to well-researched journalism, cable news appears to be factual and well-vetted.
    • Although journalists are a part of the overall media, I think we need to distinguish between journalism and infotainment that passes a news.
  • (p. 10): “Watching television newscasts clearly does not engage the mind in the same way as reading columns of newsprint.”
  • (p. 19): Ends on a reference to Adolph Hitler. He’s making an argument, and of all the wars he could have chosen, he chose WWII.
    Remember this for the Conniff reading from last month?

Democracy and the Media

  • Role in politics (p. 7): The media play a more dominant role in selecting candidates.
  • Consider this along with Donald Trump’s rise to become the Republican candidate in 2016.
  • The media (including journalists) followed his every move and covered his every tweet…

Quality of Coverage

  • Brief and Superficial coverage of politics (p. 10): “the coverage of political news is brief and superficial: complexities have to be skimmed over and there is no opportunity to debate controversial matters in the sort of depth that informed decision-making requires and that newspapers, theoretically at least, can provide” (emphasis mine).
  • Cronkite on TV coverage (p. 10): “Hypercompression of facts, foreshortened arguments, the elimination of extenuating explanation all are dictated by television’s restrictive time frame and all distort to some degree the news available on television” (his biography, 1996).
  • Pictures distort reality (p. 11): “Pictures, rather than illuminating complex situations, often distort the reality—oversimplifying and exaggerating, emphasizing the ephemeral and the trivial at the expense of the truly consequential” (emphasis mine).
  • Question: Do *we* want in-depth coverage, though? Doesn’t the media give us what we want? If we keep watching, why would they change?
    • *By “we” I mean the collective, possibly prevailing mass of citizens—I do not mean a universal exists.
  • Political coverage as ‘horse race journalism’: “[TV producers] have relatively little interest in issues, or policy alternatives, instead presenting politics as yet another form of sporting contest with individuals competing against one another for political advantage.” (p. 16)

Cultural Norms

  • American leeway in criticizing public officials (p. 13): “the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution gave citizens and the press an absolute, unconditional right to criticise official conduct.” (“criticise” is the British spelling)
  • UK willingness to tolerate secrecy (p. 12): “In the United Kingdom…reporters have to operate in a culture marked by restrictive libel laws and a willingness to tolerate secrecy in government.”
  • Secrecy of government officials in US is less (p. 14): “Populism and a degree of openness, rather than hierarchy and secrecy, prevail in the American political culture. There is a widespread belief that the people have a right to know what is being done in their name.”
    • Question: What ideologies, prevailing cultural attitudes, support Mervin’s observation?
    • Do we need to revisit Asimov’s “Cult of Ignorance?”

Celebrity Status and Power of Media Talking Heads

  • Cronkite and the Vietnam War (p. 18): “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America”—LBJ’s statement to an aide after Walter Cronkite said the Vietnam War was un-winnable in 1968.
  • Christiane Amanpour’s “ ‘nose for death and destruction’” (p. 18): news deliverers as celebrities who can influence policy.
  • Question: Who do you trust for news? In fact, what do you consider “news” vs., say, “information”?

Mervin wrote this in the late-1990s, so the proliferation of online news wasn’t what it is today. Twenty-four hour news channels were quite popular in the 1990s. Do they allow for more in-depth as opposed to superficial coverage of stories?

The events of 2020 have shown the superficiality of news or what passes as news. Some news is really opinion (conviction, in fact). If you want to read an assertion that requires … read this “article”:

  • “Socialists, with George Floyd, Get Their Anti-Police Wedge” Cheryl K. Chumley
  • I went to her page at The Washington Times and saw a series of brief (around 100 words) pieces–not articles–that read like long tweets. In one rant about the protests on police brutality, she claims, “[George Floyd]’s become the tool by which socialists, communists, anarchists can topple our nation’s police forces.”
  • But then consider this: She wrote a 2014 book Police State USA, which is about how bad it is to militarize police forces. Here’s a quote from her book blurb:
    • “The acquisition by police departments of major battlefield equipment emboldens officials to strong-arm those they should be protecting. The failure of the news media to uphold the rights of citizens sets the stage for this slippery slope.”
    • Obviously, she’s for police when they attack those she’s against, but she’s against the police if they affect her sense of “freedom.”

Next Class

We’ll be discussing Ch. 3 and 4 in Barker and Jane, so don’t wait until the last minute to do your reading. Don’t forget the Discussion Posts on Canvas.

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