Texts
Diversity, Quality, & Social Justice
Media and Cultural Industries
Week 12/Conclusion

Texts, Cultural Industries and Change
•Products = Complex, ambivalent
•Optimists/Pessimists_Armchair Assessments
•Choice, Diversity, Multiplicity
•Homogeneity vs. Diversity
•Programming and Power
•Music (MTV) – David Bowie
•TV
•Press – Information vs. Entertainment (discourses and absences)
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Social Justice
•Advertising, Commercialization and the interests they foster/support
•Promoting/inhibiting social justice
•Media dependent on advertising – effects?
•The Logics of Advertising (go deeper)
•Capitalist Realism (Schudson)
•Personal Branding; commitment to self instead of external collective
•Cross media advertising synergies (what “bubbles up”)
•Quality and Integrity of Culture (?)
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The Politics of Entertainment
•Economic Incentives/Political Messages
•Irony/Indifference as Political Response
•The Simpsons and South Park = “Whatever”
•Texts: Challenge AND Reproduce Societal Conceptions of Racism, Sexism, Xenophobia, etc.
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•Popular culture as Political (?)
•Corporate freedom ends where corporate discomfort begins ($)

Journalism
•Collapse of Journalism (integrity, objectivism, challenge to authority)?
•Citizen Journalism
•Tabloid News “standards” (If it bleeds, it leads”; Sports Journalism)
•Colin Kaepernick
•Eurovision - Conchita
•Audience Fragmentation
•The Public Interest? The Public Sphere?

Fragmentation
•Demographics; niche audiences ($)
•Shared Consumption (?)
•Short Attention Spans/surfing
•How to capture and retain attention; focus
•Shock tactics; the “event” (spectacle)
•Celebrity and Reality TV
•Authenticity/Politics (?); Societal Impact

Quality
•Standards to Maintain or Eye of the Beholder?
•Books, Films, Music, Video Games
•Old Arguments revisited.
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Conclusions
•Diversity/Quality is an elusive concept
•Tune in or Tune out?
•Purpose of this chapter
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•Conclusions: A New Era in Cultural Production?
•Change?
•Commercialization and its impact
•The implications for Cultural Workers