THEME 3

New Media & Society

Publishes key research from communication, media and cultural studies, as well as sociology, geography, anthropology, economics, the political and information sciences and the humanities. It is committed to high-quality research that aim to explore the relationship between theory, policy and practice. Impact Factor: 1.824

I chose an article covering an area in which I have a great interest. The title is “Alternative news sites and the complexities of 'space'” and it is written by Lina Dencik and published the 7th of february 2013.The article seeks to contribute to the debate on new media technologies and political space by exploring the way in which space comes to matter in the context of alternative user-generated news sites in today's media landscape. It also talks about the problems these news sites face when they move from a domestic space to a global space. The aim is to make a case for a much more comprehensive integration of research online practices into the often parallel debate on the globalization of politics.

Theoretical framing
The article will illustrate the complexities in shifting from local and national space to a global space, despite the maybe common assumption about the internet as a global medium.
It will try to challenge the linear perception of the relationship between new technologies and political space as necessarily as one of expansion towards the global.  

Research method
Drawing especially on the case of OhmyNews International and the difficulties this site has had with moving from a domestic space to a global space of activity.

Some of the findings include: Shifts in political and social activity have become popular not only in scholarly debate, but also in mainstream political discourse, arguing that we are moving towards a global space of politics. This due to the media development, that suggest that new media technologies are expanding and enlarging political community, significantly reducing the role of territory in communicative exchange. The debate have mostly been about the perceived opportunities for new alternative media outlets to nurture and sustain democracy “from below” on a global scale but there has been a significant absence of grounding of these speculations in actual research on online practices.

Briefly explain to a first year student what theory is, and what theory is not.Rational type of abstract thinking around a problem. Somehow pointing out the core problems or topics of interest. A proximity and a well-confirmed type of explanation of nature and is explained so a scientist are in position to either support it or contradict it. The starting point is basically to highlight what may be a problem with a guess and see what possible approach that may attack this from several angles.
It is not, according to Sutton & Staw, references, data (empirical evidence), variables, diagrams and hypotheses. Empirical data for example is not necessarily measured in quantity but used to discuss, represent or to construct relationships between the data. The theory may also not necessarily be based and motivated by previous data which may control and affect the outcome of the theories.

Describe the major theory or theories that are used in your selected paper. Which theory type (see Table 2 in Gregor) can the theory or theories be characterized as?It gives example of earlier contributors to the new media space and say some about how, where and why the situation is as it is today.

II Explanation: The article is a contribution to the ongoing debate and doesn't dig that deep into where this debate is going and how the debate may or will form the future media space.

Even though most of the article focuses on the I Explanation, Gregors II Prediction is somehow also included. In the conclusion she definitely mention that there might be future problems if the globalize political activity will be the only progressive response to the “hollowing out” of the national political space and that this may mask the power relations and the deeply unequal nature of any global constellation in which social media is used.Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories?She doesn't have to come up with a proper suggestion on how this could actually be taken into concern. Previous research and opinions in the debate may also limit her approach to her theory about this ongoing debate but its a benefit that because her discussion on WHY this is important its beneficial for the reader to easily understand the complexity in the issue regarding the future broader media space.

THEME 2 - what is enlightenment

What is Enlightenment?
Enlightenment aiming at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. For enlightenment, anything which does not conform to the standard of calculability and utility must be viewed with suspicion in a way of gaining access to a view of more critical thinking.
What is the meaning and function of “myth” in Adorno and Horkheimer’s argument?
The increase: in economic productivity which creates the conditions for a more just world also affords the technical apparatus and the social groups controlling it a disproportionate advantage over the rest of the population. The enslavement to nature of people raday cannot be separated from social progress.

False clarity is only another name for myth. something that´s not true and lacks of reason.

As an example of today the defrauded masses cling to the myth of success still more ardently than the successful. Just like they mention in the text myth can be used to imbue the outside world with an arbitrary meaning and used as a tool to mass deception.

Enlightenment stands in the same relationship to things as the dictator to human beings. He knows them to the extent that he can manipulate them and here myth can be used as an instrument of control.

What are the “old” and “new” media that are discussed in the Dialectic of Enlightenment?
Those in charge no longer take much trouble to conceal the structure. the technology of the culture industry confines itself to standardization and mass production and sacrifices what once distinguished the logic of the work from that of society.

As an example they mention the telephone and the radio and their different impact. the former liberally permitted the participant to play the role of subject when the later Democratically makes everyone equally into listeners, in order to expose them in authoritarian fashion to the same programs put out by different stations and where private transmissions where condem. the listeners were degraded to passive listeners

This is still how it works today but with the development and impact of internet more and more people actively contribute to “new” media and as traditional mass media actors struggles to keep up we see a small change in who is gaining the most impact today.

Easy saying: more usergenerated content in todays “new” media landscape.

What is meant by “culture industry”?
Its millions of participants demand reproduction processes which inevitably lead to the use of standard products to meet the same needs at countless locations.

Films and radio call themselves industries, and the published figures for their directors incomes quell any doubts about the social necessity of their finished products. The standardized forms, it is claimed, were originally derived from the needs of the consumers: that is why they are accepted with so little resistance.

What is the relationship between mass media and “mass deception”, according to Adorno and Horkheimer?

The mentality of the public, which allegedly and actually favors the system of the culture industry, is a part of the system.  The industries are tightly clustered which leave smaller space for a wider range of broadcaster which affects the public and creates a more unity of politics. Sharp distinctions that you find in between A and B movies for example do not so much reflect the real differences as assist in the classification, organization and identification of consumers of the Mass medias.
The mass medias hierarchy serial qualities purveyed to the public serves only to quantify it more completely. The audience is supposed to behave spontaneously according to a selection of mass product manufactured for their type which gives a mass deception of a wide range of products but its actually only a few providers behind it.

As seen here:

Mediakartan 2013:https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.fria.nu/extern/artikelbilagor/Mediekartan2013.pdf&sa=U&ei=a5t7UvS0CYGZ4gTI8ICQBQ&ved=0CBQQFjAD&sig2=sWsQFbZI52THU0ehFPDaDg&usg=AFQjCNHmDEY8NmSILVZGBMCHjPLu0WB7OQ

Please identify one or two concepts/terms that you find particularly interesting. Motivate your choice.

Unified standard of value:
conspicuous production, the amount of investment put on show. Is the spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury goods and services to publicly display economic power.

This is relevant when discussion ecological issues and highlight our strive to gain better status through mechanically differentiated products which are ultimately all the same.

Promissory note of pleasure:

That the promise disdainfully intimates that there is nothing more to come, that for example that the dinner must be satisfied with reading the menu. The desire inflamed by the glossy names and images is served up finally with a celebration of the daily round it sought to escape.

Its basicly the culture industries endlessly cheating its consumers out of what its endlessly promising.

THEME1 - Theory of science

1) In the begining of the text Russel asks the question “Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?” This question would probably be answered with a straightforward and confident answer but we should, according to Russel, be more aware and realizing about all the vagueness and confusion that underlie our ordinary ideas, Our current deterministic view of the world and how we choose how to view different things as “sense data” in this case is how we choose to see, our immediatly sensation of things as, for example with the chair and the table, the color, shape etc. He wants to highlight the distinctions that cause most trouble in philosophy - the distinction between “appearance” and “reality”, between what things seem to be and what they actually are. It all depends on how we choose to view it and on what “level”, with the naked eye or for example a microscope. But thinking of how what we mean when we talk with confident about how something appear the confidence with which we began can desert us and the things we may have viewed at as knowledge may turn into to something more uncertain. By judging things so unreflectingly we think we actually see the real shapes which as the practical men we are attracts us. He also put it in another way, he mean that if there are any things that exist independently of us they cannot be the immediate objects of our sensations which “Sense data” presumingly is.

2) By proposition he means the statements about something, for example an object, name etc. This description will vary for different people, or for the same person at different times. the proposition that “A is so and so” means that A has the property “so and so” but The description usually makes no difference to the truth or falsehood of the proposition. When we make a statement about something as a fact, which is only known by the description, we often intend to make our statement, not in the form involving the description, but about the actual thing described. As with a verbal expression in math which we know from history as a description to help us organise and define our mathematical system, we know nothing beyond what is logically deducible from this propositions or if it hold the whole answer.

3) Russell talks about two different descriptions, Ambiguos and Definite. Ambiguos is any phrase on the form “a so and so” and definite a phrase in singular on the form “THE so and so”. When one object, no more, have one certain property and we do not have knowledge of the same object by acquaintance, we did not actually interpret with it. As an example russell mention “the man with the iron mask”, We can know that he existed and many propositions are known about him but we do not know who he actually was a long time ago. We can only know ONE to be the man in the iron mask but we do not have any “sense data” of him, for example color, smell etc but still a definite description of him as THE man with the iron mask

4) Russell talks about what we mean when we say that we know something and how do we know if that is true. A fact will not exists, besides the knowledge constituted by the actual belief, or also the knowledge constituted by perception. A belief is based on earlier experiences connected to different “sense data” which been collected along the way. We can never be sure if a knowledge is actually all true and we may interpret it differently depending on where we hear/read or from who/whom.

We can't neither say that nothing is knowledge because such a definition is at once too wide and too narrow but more that knowledge is what is validly deduced from _known_ premisses known by us.