Page 196 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts
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POWER
characterised by petit-narratives or identities characterised by, for
example, nation, gender, ethnicity and sexuality.
Postmodernism in comparison is concerned with aesthetic practices
that seek to articulate the condition associated with postmodernity.
Frow(1997) argues that postmodernism is a genre of theory writing,
not a description of the world.
See also: Bricolage, Modern/modernism/modernity
Further reading: Easthope and McGowan (1992); McRobbie (1994); Morley
(1996)
POST-BROADCAST MEDIA
A distinction can be made between broadcast era and post-broadcast
media. It may assist in thinking about the social implications of
technological change. It includes such contrasts as:
Broadcast media Post-broadcast media
analogue digital
one-to-many many-to-many
mass interactive
television computer
media telecommunications
centralised dispersed
standardised customised
public private
sit back sit forward
‘passive’ consumer active user
Post-broadcast media allowfor users rather than consumers, and
through interactivity allowthose users to produce or ‘write’ in the
given application (from games to web sites, video-streaming to online
journals), whereas broadcast-era ‘literacy’ confined audiences to ‘read-
only’ status.
POWER
Power has been theorised in two competing ways by Marxism and
Foucault, and both are influential for cultural and media studies. At the
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