0% found this document useful (0 votes)
26 views2 pages

Media Studies Reading 1

Uploaded by

samiaerraoui727
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
0% found this document useful (0 votes)
26 views2 pages

Media Studies Reading 1

Uploaded by

samiaerraoui727
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

SEMESTER 4

INTRODUCTION TO MEDAI STUDIES


Prof. Khalid SAID & Prof. Belqassem LAGHFIRI
READING ASSIGNMENT : 2
From: Ott, B. L., & Mack, R. L. (2014). Critical media studies: An introduction. Wiley-Blackwell

How We Know What We Know


Read the text and answer the following questions.
1. What are the ways through which we know what we know?
2. Which way constitutes the huge bulk of our knowledge as human beings?
3. What do the authors mean by ‘Mediation’?
4. Underline two examples of ‘mediation’ used in the text below?
5. According to the authors, what was the most significant contribution of print media to
the development of mass communication?
6. How did the authors define Media Studies? What are the two properties of Media
Studies discussed below?
Prof. Khalid SAID & Prof. Belqassem LGHFIRI

Everything we know is learned in one of two ways.1 The first


way is somatically. These are the things we know through direct sensory
perception of our environment. We know what some things look, smell,
feel, sound, or taste like because we personally have seen, smelled, felt,
heard, or tasted them. One of the authors of this text knows, for
example, that “Rocky Mountain oysters” (bull testicles) are especially
chewy because he tried them once at a country and western bar. In
short, some of what we know is based on first-hand, unmediated
experience. But the things we know through direct sensory perception
make up a very small percentage of the total things we know. The vast
majority of what we know comes to us a second way, symbolically. These
are the things we know through someone or something such as a parent,
friend, teacher, museum, textbook, photograph, radio, film, television,
or the internet. This type of information is mediated, meaning that it
came to us via some indirect channel or medium. The word medium is
derived from the Latin word medius, which means “middle” or that which
comes between two things: the way that television and the Discovery
Channel might come between us and the animals of the Serengeti, for
instance.
When we stop to think about all the things we know, we suddenly
realize that the vast majority of what we know is mediated. We may
know something about China even if we have never been there thanks
to Wikipedia; we may know something about King George VI even
though he died long before we were born thanks to The King’s Speech
(2010); we may even know something about the particulars of
conducting a homicide investigation even though we have likely never
conducted one thanks to the crime drama CSI. The mass media account,
it would seem, for much of what we know (and do not know) today. But
this has not always been the case.

Prof. Khalid SAID & Prof. Belqassem LGHFIRI


1
Before the invention of mass media, the spoken or written word was the primary medium for
conveying information and ideas. This method of communication had several significant and interrelated
limitations. First, as the transmission of information was tied to the available means of transportation
(foot, horse, buggy, boat, locomotive, or automobile depending upon the time period), its dissemination
was extraordinarily slow, especially over great distances like continents and oceans. Second, because
information could not easily be reproduced and distributed, its scope was extremely limited. Third, since
information often passed through multiple channels (people), each of which altered it, if only slightly,
there was a high probability of message distortion. Simply put, there was no way to communicate a
uniform message to a large group of people in distant places quickly prior to the advent of the modern
mass media. What distinguishes mass media like print, radio, and television from individual media like
human speech and hand-written letters, then, is precisely their unique capacity to address large
audiences in remote locations with relative efficiency.
Critical Media Studies is about the social and cultural consequences of that revolutionary
capability. Recognizing that mass media are, first and foremost, communication technologies that
increasingly mediate both what we know and how we know, this book surveys a variety of perspectives
for evaluating and assessing the role of mass media in our daily lives. Whether listening to an iPod while
walking across campus, sharing pictures with friends on Facebook, receiving the latest sports scores via
your smartphone, sharing your favorite YouTube video over email, or settling in for the most recent
episode of The Big Bang Theory or Downton Abbey, the mass media are regular fixtures of everyday
life. But before beginning to explore the specific and complex roles that mass media play in our lives,
it is worth looking, first, at who they are, when they originated, and how they have developed.

YOUR ANSWERS

--
Prof. Khalid SAID & Prof. Belqassem LGHFIRI
-- 2

You might also like