Frameworks and Models
I often talked about this as being one of my favorite sociological concepts. It makes sense of the dynamic relationship between societal structures and individual expression.
What is structuration?
She is the eponymous character of a 1937 animated film and its 2025 remake, discussed in class not just as an example of Disney extending and making money out of existing IP, but also as a demonstration of how technical affordances in media production can shape media messages.
Who is Snow White?
I cited this as an example of why participatory culture is awesome (I was really, really obsessed with it).
What is Conclave (2024 and 2025)?
She is your class beadle.
Who is Angee(A) / Sandee(E)?
This is the course title of COMM 21.
What is Media and Society?
It is a model in journalism studies that helps us understand the construction of media content or messages, and the different levels of influences involved in this construction.
What is the Hierarchy of Influences?
He was a bald French guy philosopher whose writings on discourse (among other things) significantly influenced the field of sociology and cultural studies (among other things).
Who is Michel Foucault?
This Disney Renaissance movie, adapted from a Romantic era novel by Victor Hugo, was the subject of a video essay we watched in class. The creator argues that the text had to be reinterpreted based on the issues that mattered to its audiences at given historical (thus cultural) moments.
What is the Hunchback of Notre Dame?
This is the module under which you will find the link to the peer evaluations Google form.
What is Module 0?
These are the 2 components of a sign.
What are the signifier and the signified?
It is the only objective audience theory that we discussed. It assumes that people deliberately use media for particular purposes.
What is the Uses and Gratifications Theory?
He developed the Encoding/Decoding model and wrote key works on representation, highlighting the necessity of understanding cultural, political, and economic contexts when making sense of mediated messages.
Who is Stuart Hall?
This is the US-based paper that the docuseries The Fourth Estate focuses on. The docuseries follows the paper's coverage of the early days of the first Donald Trump presidency. It shows how journalists' routines are shaped by organizational, personal, and larger systemic factors.
What is the New York Times?
This is the number of Canvas modules in our course (including Module 0).
What is 6?
These are representational practices that can essentialize, reduce, and naturalize difference by relying on few memorable and easily grasped characteristics about the so-called 'Other.'
What are stereotypes?
It is a group of statements, practices, and ways of seeing and looking situated in a particular place in history. These statements may seem disparate, with no organic unity, but are often ordered systematically.
What is discourse?
This Italian Marxist philosopher is known for his writings on cultural and political domination. We often associate him with the term "hegemony."
Who is Antonio Gramsci?
A sketch about a slave auction from this series is a good example of how hegemonic media representations can be creatively subverted.
What is Key and Peele?
This Canvas tab is where you will find your groupings for the final project.
What is People?
This is the framework, developed by Paul du Gay and Stuart Hall, that COMM 21 is structured after. The model shows how we can only fully make sense of cultural artifacts and their meanings by understanding the distinct and interrelated processes of representation, production, regulation, identity, and consumption through which they exist and develop.
What is the Circuit of Culture?
It is a study of visual representations that integrates semiotics with the analysis of the structure and uses of figurative language.
What is visual rhetoric?
He really, really did not like the media effects approach. He criticized it for tackling social problems backwards, for making use of rigid definitions of audience behaviors, and its methodological shortcomings. (Clue: His last name is something you might associate with Thanos)
Who is David Gauntlett?
The musical number titled "A Diagnosis" from this TV series incredibly lays out key characteristics of Foucauldian discourse - for instance, that discourse produces statements, objects, practices, and social relations.
What is Crazy Ex-Girlfriend?
It is a short academic essay that summarizes the main arguments of an academic article and details the ways those arguments are supported by the author/s.
What is a précis?
This effects theory argues that TV can cultivate certain views about the world. It assumes that repeated exposure to mass media over time influences the viewer's ideas regarding social reality. (Clue: Media cultivate!)
What is Cultivation Theory?