Research Catalog

Title

Culture first! : promoting standards in the new media age / edited by Kenneth Dyson and Walter Homolka.

Publication

London ; New York : Cassell, 1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Dyson, Kenneth H. F.
• Homolka, Walter.

Description

xv, 175 pages; 22 cm

Summary

• As the 'digital code' begins to penetrate the whole of our social fabric, we are increasingly conscious of living in a new era whose scale, dimensions and implications we do not fully comprehend. 'Interactivity', 'virtual reality' and 'global communications' are some of the most obvious dimensions of this new reality. Its implications include new cross-media acquisitions and mergers by players like Murdoch, Viacom and Disney and major questions about the future of printed word and reading.
• This book does not attempt to offer a broad survey of the new 'digital age' in all its aspects. Instead, it restricts its questions to cultural standards and the issue of quality in media, to questions with an unavoidably normative content.
• Culture First! challenges two fashionable arguments in cultural studies and media studies: that, in the modern 'digital age' of reproduction and simulation, technological change has made traditional conceptions of standards and quality in media obsolescent; that we can feel secure about standards in the face of evidence that the user of media is actively selecting, interpreting and remaking media culture.
• Culture First! argues that the proper study of culture is normative; and that the proper, and neglected, purpose of cultural studies should be the nurturing of normative argument and judgement.
• This purpose can be better pursued if we return to the distinction between our 'best self' and our 'ordinary self' when thinking about cultural questions; if we seek to articulate and think rigorously about aesthetic and ethical standards; and if we recognize the specific cultural values of the printed word and reading as an activity and that the printed word is more than just a medium.

Subjects

• Mass media > Technological innovations
• Mass media > Social aspects
• Popular culture
• Mass media and culture

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

1. Revisiting Culture and Anarchy: Media Studies, the Cultural Industries and the issue of Quality / Kenneth Dyson -- 2. Defending Ourselves Against the Seductions of Eloquence / Neil Postman -- 3. On the Threshold of a New Era in Media History: What Follows the Period of Technological Innovation? / Gerhard Schulze -- 4. The Ethics of Media Use: Media Consumption as a Moral Challenge / Hermann Lubbe -- 5. Coping with Plenty: Psychological Aspects of Television and Information Overload / Peter Winterhoff-Spurk -- 6. Regulating for Cultural Standards: A Legal Perspective / Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem -- 7. Nothing Can Replace Reading / Walter Homolka -- 8. On Being Passionate about Standards: Promoting the Voice of Aesthetics in Brodcasting and Multimedia / Kenneth Dyson.

ISBN

• 0304337714 (hbk)
• 0304337722 (pbk)

OCLC

ocm35901831

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries