Bugger, It's the Exam

i'm gonna bombard you with my stupid media knowledge. because its bore-ing me, i'll bore you too. that's only fair. ain't it?

what is technological determinism (i know its such a mouthful, try saying it 5 times straight)

technological determinism is the theory that technology is the 'prime mover' of society. It says that technology are the prime causes of changes in society and that it is the fundamental condition underlying the pattern of social organisation because of the following three reason:
1. techonlogical developments requires a fixed series of steps or stages for all countries
2. technology imposes similar contraints on societies
3. values and behaviours are in response to technological imperatives

so what part of that did you understand?

five impacts of new media:-
1. change in political landscape
2. radical change in economic mechanisms
3. leads to social changes
4. revamp educational systems
5. leads to cultural change

four media systems:-
1. authoritarian theory
under this theory the media serves to support and advance the policies of the government as determined by political machinery then in operation. it controls the media through heavy censorship, licensing, bribery and repression. the media however, is privately owned and criticism of the government is NOT allowed

2. marxist/communist theory
karl marx saw that the society would one day evolve to a "perfect" state and that this evolution process is inevitable. under this theory, the media should be the government's partneres in facilitating the process of evolution. Lenin said that the media should be collective propagandist, agitators, organisors and that the fundamental purpose of the press was to strengthen communist social order. the media in this case is owned by the state. criticism of the government is however permitted but the discussion of ideology is off limits.

3. libertarian theory
under this media system, the media is privately owned and managed. criticism of the government is not only permitted but is also encouraged. this media system is based on the idea where it serves as a "marketplace of ideas" where people can choose from the whole range of human ideas and values. the libertarian model is encompassed in the first ammendment which states that congress shall make no law that abridges the freedom of speech or the freedom of the press. in this media, content is not regulated by anyone. this theory is based on the ideology where john milton said that people woudl discover the truth if given the opportunity.

4. social responsibility theory
this media system is a modern variant of the libetarian model. it challenges the libertarian model in 4 aspects:-
i) truth
are people able to distinguish truth? when the libertarians founded the ideology, they presumed that every individual would be a truth seeker and that people would hence bother to sort out the infromation they recieve.
ii) diversity
is media diverse enough to represent all the views possible on a single issue?
iii) access
is the media fully accessible to anyone to air their views?
iv) independence
libertarianism assumes that truth seekign individual exchange ideas in an unstructed, freewheeling marketplace. However, because media is profit making, it is constantly biased by advertisments and even manipulated by PR practitioners
the media under this theory functions to provide:-
i) truthful, comprehensive and intelligent accounts of the day's event in a context that gives meaning
ii) a forum for the exchange of comment, criticism and even contrary ides
iii) a representation of society's goals and values and work to clarify them

so tell me, how do you think you could do an exam on such theories, giving examples of each in a real life situation. i'm not god. hello?

anyway, i'm glad tommorrow is the last exam. then its like... erm goodbye year 2, hello year 3. time jsut really flies huh. i was sitting with yawen at some office yesterday filling up a job application form and sheesh, we could event account for time. we couldn't figure out how long we were in poly and what not.

i've lost all sense of time.

so then, anyway, i think i'm gonna bury myself in my notes again if i can bear to. so much for being critical media professionals. baaaah. i'm a goat.