Media, Advertising and Culture

Increasingly, the media and the advertising industry is the primary memetic distribution source in Western culture and, especially in American culture. What does this mean? It means the media is defining and/or shaping the culture in which we live.

Douglas Kellner:
"Radio, television, film, and the other products of media culture provide materials out of which we forge our very identities; our sense of selfhood; our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality; and of "us" and "them." Media images help shape our view of the world and our deepest values: what we consider good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil."
--from "Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, and Media Culture"

Douglas Kellner is George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education at UCLA. He has written many books and papers on social theory, culture and politics. He has a couple of websites where many of the essays he's written on these topics are available. His Illuminations site has many essays in html format. A newer, larger site here, has even more essays, including most of those on the Illuminations site, all in PDF format. Additionally, this site also has some Quicktime sound and video files.

A lot of good analysis, and although academic in tone, I find it very readable.
Read more...