thestig, 04/12

“The failure of critical thinkers and organizations charged with articulating the interests of dominated individuals to think clearly about this problem only reinforces the mechanisms I have described.” (336)

I thought our class discussion on this quote was so interesting: All of these forces in society say we cannot teach kids about television. TV is TV, and that’s that. A positivist would say it isn’t an appropriate object to study. However, a critical theorist would argue that this is ideology is the very notion that keeps perpetuating the malaise of today’s media and influence that it has on the consumers. The issue is that people don’t have the critical tools to analyze the propaganda models used in today’s media, and the impact it has on our society.

What sort of undertaking would this be if we were to answer Bourdieu’s call for instilling our kids with the tools for analyzing today’s media? It seems like this would be an incredible undertaking. We live in a world where every day, there are new technologies developed and new concepts to reaching the audience, both of which, s Bourdieu would argue, seem so natural in society. So it would be a real challenge to pick out all of the mechanisms that should be studied. And wouldn’t the capitalist alter the mechanisms if the masses were studying their persuasion techniques? Sine the media companies in this country are privately held, they have to generate profits for their owners, and would be obligated to find knew ways to combat the studies of media.

In order to really solve this problem, I think it would be important to build an infrastructure within the agenda of education and media which is healthy and balanced so children can learn the mechanisms. I think this would require a combined effort from both the media companies and the education system. The media companies would need to agree on making children’s programming that is focused on media itself, i.e. shows kids could understand that are focused on showing the point and counter point.