MECO1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Glossary Of Policy Debate Terms, General Order, Bourgeoisie
20 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
MECO1001
SEM 1 2018
MECO1001
Week 7 – Genre, medium, reality / Exam Prep
Key Theories/Theorists/Readings
‘News readings, news readers’ – John Fiske
‘Approaching Genre’ – John Frow
Fiske (1987): ‘Strategies of containment’ that news producers apply in ‘making sense of the
real’.
News as discourse
o“a set of conventions that strive to control and limit the meaning of the events
it conveys”
Considering news as objective truth, and ignoring questions of accuracy, bias or
objectivity are “based on the empiricist notion of reality”. the questions are
important not because they judge the quality of news but because of the “insight they
can give into the professional ideology of the news makers” give glimpse into the
ideas that inform the presentation of the news
Transparency fallacy: the idea that television is a window into the world (survives in
TV newsrooms)
Distinctions between information and entertainment, fact and fiction are important
because they inform the ethics of the producers
Docu-dramas: television is fond of docu-dramas, showing how easy it is for its textual
form to cross boundaries between fact and fiction but though the news may not be
that different to entertainment (soap operas), there is a difference in the way audiences
and producers understand and approach the two genres
oi.e. Tulloch and Moran study (1986): male viewers preferring the ‘factual’
programs such as 60 Minutes, female and children preferring the soap opera
drama concerned with private sphere, news with public sphere masculine,
factual programs stimulated ‘discussion’, whereas soap operas produced
‘gossip’
News is seen to tell the story of key events of the last 24 hours debatable definition
when considering that the imposing of an order of importance on ‘the real’ inherently
utilizes subjectivity
o“The telling of stories and the selection of the key events are clearly cultural
activities.”
Conventions of the text (news media) determine the general order and nature of the
news to be broadcasted before the events even unfold, as is required due to the
nefarious deadlines of the trade in the name of efficiency
o“The type of stories, the forms that they will take, and the program structure
into which they will be inserted are all determined long before any of the
events of the day occur.”
= definition
= quote
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
MECO1001
SEM 1 2018
o“During the forced withdrawal of Belgium from the (then) Belgian Congo, an
American journalist landed at Lusaka airport and, on seeing a group of white
women waiting for evacuation, rushed over to them with the classic question,
“Has anyone here been raped, and speaks English?” His story had been
“written” before landing, all he needed was a few local details.”
The popularity of the news is determined by its generic characteristic which constitute
the “strategies of containment” which attempt to contain “reality” TV news is a
constant struggle between these strategies and the disruptive forces of “the reality”
that news refers to + social differences amongst its audiences
The strategies of containment – the news’ way of making sense of and controlling the
real
oCategorization: for an event to be deemed newsworthy, it should be recent,
concern elite persons, be negative, and be surprising
Recent: originated recently, with few references to previous events
(little sense of continuous history, ongoing stories are broken into 24hr
self-contained segments) should also impose closure, completion
Elite persons: people should all be familiar, if not individually than in
their social roles, aka archetypes: unionist, disaster survivor, victim,
minority spokesperson etc. The familiar individuals are the socially
powerful, and those who are powerless, or are the voices of opposition
are unfamiliar and fill the social roles. “The elite beat accumulated
meanings of their past appearances [and] carry greater semiotic weight.
[…]”
Negative: new disrupts the normal. News runs on the unspoken
assumption that “life is ordinarily smooth-running, rule-and-law
abiding, and harmonious” (embody the ideal, not the reality), so
anything not fitting the ideal (i.e. disputes, murders), typically
negative, is newsworthy 3rd world, however, is seen as a place where
negative/detrimental events are commonplace, so reports of negative
news merely confirm our beliefs of their social norms
Conflict = important to a good story, as in fiction
Surprising: tension between the predictability that is a result of news
conventions and the unpredictability of “the real”. News reporting
resists unpredictability, due to the ‘prewritten stories’ that adhere to
conventions. News never acknowledges the conventionalization of the
real, and therefore surprising stories show how unconventionality
triumphs over conventional news, and grounds news in reality
oSubcategories: news is subdivided into politics, the economy, foreign affairs,
domestic news, occasional stories and sport, sometimes entertainment.
Domestic news is sometimes divided into ‘hard’ (conflict and crime in public
sphere) and ‘soft’ (human interest)
Categorization is a sensemaking act, constructing a familiar conceptual
grid which the raw events can be instantly located and inserted into
= definition
= quote
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Week 7 genre, medium, reality / exam prep. Fiske (1987): strategies of containment" that news producers apply in making sense of the real". News as discourse: a set of conventions that strive to control and limit the meaning of the events it conveys . Considering news as objective truth, and ignoring questions of accuracy, bias or objectivity are based on the empiricist notion of reality . Transparency fallacy: the idea that television is a window into the world (survives in. Distinctions between information and entertainment, fact and fiction are important because they inform the ethics of the producers. Sem 1 2018: during the forced withdrawal of belgium from the (then) belgian congo, an. American journalist landed at lusaka airport and, on seeing a group of white women waiting for evacuation, rushed over to them with the classic question, Has anyone here been raped, and speaks english? his story had been.
