CS 203 Midterm Notes PDF

CS 203 - Midterm Notes Keywords Project 2024 Reading: What Is A Keyword? -​ Keyword = a socially prominent word (ex: art, industry, media) with interlocking and sometimes contradictory meanings -​ Keywords often have both technical and everyday meanings, leading to potential mis...

CS 203 - Midterm Notes Keywords Project 2024 Reading: What Is A Keyword? -​ Keyword = a socially prominent word (ex: art, industry, media) with interlocking and sometimes contradictory meanings -​ Keywords often have both technical and everyday meanings, leading to potential misunderstandings -​ Different from the commercial use of “keyword” in online search and advertising -​ Understanding keywords is crucial to avoid confusion in public and personal disclosure Challenges In Understanding Keywords: 1.​ Historical Changes Of Meaning (Diachronic): -​ Words have layers of meaning over time -​ Some meanings persist, some fade, and new ones emerge (ex: faith, gay) -​ Understanding past discourse requires recognizing meanings relevant at the time 2.​ Multiple Concurrent Meanings (Polysemy): -​ Words have multiple meanings used simultaneously (ex: liberal in political vs. general sense) -​ Some meanings are vague, requiring contextual specification -​ Different speakers may assign positive or negative connotations based on beliefs 3.​ Interconnection of Historical & Polysemous Meanings: -​ Available word meanings change over time, making interpretation complex -​ Identifying intended meaning depends on context, audience, and speaker’s background Keywords & Social Thinking: -​ Keywords play a key role in public debate and societal discourse -​ Words shape how we perceive and articulate social issues -​ Meanings are inherited and shaped by history, education, and societal values -​ Understanding words involves more than dictionary definitions – context matters Evolution Of The Term “Keyword”: -​ Raymond Williams developed a critical approach to keywords in Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976) -​ The concept has evolved through various works, including: - New Keywords (Bennett, Grossberg & Morris, 2005) - The Journal Key Words (Spokesman Books) - Earlier mentions by Michel Bréal (1900) and Georges Matoré (1953) -​ The origin of the word “keyword” is sometimes traced to Michel Bréal’s Semantics: Studies in the Science of Meaning Building On Raymond Williams’ Keywords: -​ Williams explored keywords through a Marxist lens, analyzing: - How words reflect social power structures - How meanings are shaped by ideological and political discourse -​ The modern digital era has transformed public discourse, requiring new keyword analysis Keywords & Contested Meanings: -​ Words are often controversial and contested (ex: democracy, corporate) -​ Change in meaning is often driven by social and political forces -​ Keywords require understanding in relation to other complex words and the social contexts in which they are used Lecture One: What Is A Theory? -​ Theory = a statement that sets out to explain something, event, etc -​ Originates from contemplation, spectacle, and mental conception -​ “A way of seeing, of understanding, and of planning” (Hyman 1975) -​ “About generalization, relating a new situation to an old one in order to discern patterns and figure out what is likely to happen” (Sears 2005) What Is A Fact? -​ Fact = a thing that is known to be true or to exist (OED) -​ OED = Old Greek Spectator What Is An Opinion? -​ Opinion = belief based on grounds short of proof, view held as probable, what one thinks about something (OED) -​ OED = Old Greek Spectator Evaluating Theories: There are five criteria: 1.​ Scope: How much does the theory describe and explain? 2.​ Testability: Is the theory testable? 3.​ Parsimony: Is the theory appropriately simple? 4.​ Utility: Is the theory useful? 5.​ Heurism: Does the theory generate new thoughts or insights? Balancing Criteria For Evaluating Theories: -​ Better/worse against some criteria -​ Does any theory do well against all criteria? -​ What is the theory being measured against/for? Perspective For Studying Theories: -​ Theories reflect points of view, not necessarily false or wrong -​ Different theories are not necessarily incompatible -​ Theories have limited focus and scope Three Levels Of Study In Communication Studies: 1.​ Language = Micro Level -​ Ex: Messages, Talk, Texts 2.​ Media = Meso Level -​ Ex: Press, Radio, Social Media 3.​ Culture = Macro Level -​ Ex: Class, Regional, National Sophocles: -​ (497 - 405 BCE) -​ “Language, and thought like the wind”  -​ “And the feelings that make the town” -​ “Man has taught himself, and shelter against the cold” -​ “Refuge from the rain” -​ From Antigone (442 BCE) Language: -​ “A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of the bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality” (Karl Marx, 1818 - 1883) Three Theories Of Language: 1.​ Reflective: -​ Language is a system for naming objects, things, etc -​ Ex: Nomenclature 2.​ Intentional: -​ What the author or speaker intends 3.​ Constructionist: -​ Language is social = it “constructs” reality -​ Reality is not “made up” -​ Word choices, structures, connotations, etc = create a perception of object/etc -​ “Our perception” = “our reality” -​ Examples: - Police officer chatted with the teenager - Police officer spoke to the teenager - Police officer interrogated the teenager Primary Resources Of Communication: -​ Human body necessary, ex: voice, hands -​ Non-human objects and forces are adapted and shaped by humans for communication -​ The abridged history of writing instruments is finger in sand/clay → quill → pencil → ballpoint pen → finger on touchscreen Materiality Of Language: -​ Spoken words are a process of human activity using only immediate, constitutive, physical resources -​ Written words, with their continuing but not necessarily direct relation to speech, are a form of material production, adapting non-human resources to a human end (Williams, 1977) Raymond Williams (1976/1983) Keywords: -​ Historical semantics, the study of reference, meaning, or truth -​ Formal Semantics (sense, reference, implication, and logical form) (OED) -​ Lexical Semantics (word choices, relations) (OED) -​ Historical Semantics (change over time and place) -​ 131 keywords, the record of an inquiry into a vocabulary - To show language does not just “simply reflect the processes of society and history” - Some important social and historical processes occur within language Four Keywords: 1.​ Common 2.​ Communication 3.​ Communism 4.​ Community Language = Common(s): -​ Since language mediates concepts, reality, objects between members of a culture - To represent and exchange meanings and concepts we must share a language - A common language allows us to correlate our concepts and ideas with certain written words, spoken sounds or visual image (Hall 1997) Communication: -​ Essentially a social affair -​ People “share rules” of language, customs, habits, all of which come to structure their -​ culture and society  -​ Communication renders true social life practicable, for communication means organization -​ Communication(s): not optional extra, integral to all societies, to all forms of origin, to everything -​ Transmit = one way process -​ Share = a common or mutual process Mass Communications: -​ Thought of in a too functional and too secondary way -​ Large crowds and audiences before mass communications, but audiences are now mostly dispersed and small -​ “There are no masses, only ways of seeing people as masses” (Williams 1958) Grammar In Communication: -​ “Think of grammar as the instruction manual that will help you master the tools of the writer’s trade: words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs” (Kesser & McDonald, 2008) Gripsrud’s Rhetoric Reading: Semiotics, Hermeneutics, Rhetoric: -​ Semiotics has the text as its primary object - About signs and structures, the material of the communication process, and how this is handled at each end, both by senders and recipients -​ Hermeneutics is the relationship between recipients and the text - About interpretation, especially the interpretation that takes place on the part of recipients - It is also conducted all the time in innumerable ways among senders, journalistic or artistic, since any subject must be interpreted both before and during the production of a text - Interpretation is simply a necessary part of being human, any text always carries or represents an interpretation of something -​ Rhetoric focuses on the relationship between senders and texts - Highly relevant to, and indeed an aspect of, the process of communication as a whole Lecture Two: Winslow (2017) The Language Of Inequality: -​ “Poverty is not an unfortunate accident” -​ Karl Marx and classical marxism = first coherent account of inequality as an ideological process -​ “Assumed capitalism will inevitably generate arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that pose radical threats to the perception of economic justice” -​ Examples of massive failures of (state) communist regimes of USSR, Eastern Europe, and Cuba -​ Cutting of global poverty from 50% to 20% between 1980 and 2016, half of this was through China’s state-led and directed capitalism -​ “It is misguided to assume empirical methods can explain economic arrangements” -​ “Empirical methods can reveal the language we choose to explain why some are rich and poor. They can’t explain why” -​ Economic arrangements: “individualistic” vs. “structural” explanations = a rich site of struggle where misrepresentation and reality full converge -​ People do not do “well when confronted with contradictions, conundrums, and paradoxes. We desire order, coherence, and consistency” Ideology: -​ Ideology = a means to order a disorderly world to better understand one’s place in the world and to explain to oneself what is going on -​ It is best understood as a mechanism through which alternatives are foreclosed, not as a method of brainwashing -​ Most visible when language and reality diverge, needs to seal up the cracks between language and reality -​ Ideology, in practice, is the political language that has the capacity to dictate decision, manufacture consent, influence public belief and behaviour, and indicate the groups upon which the social order remains stable by generating consent to its parameters through the production and distribution of language -​ Ideological adherence is a continuous process, always prone to failure and contradiction Rhetoric 1st Communication Theory - Aristotle (384 - 322 BCE): -​ Oxford English Dictionary defines “rhetoric” two ways: 1.​ “Art of persuasive or impressive speaking or writing” 2.​ “Language designed to persuade or impress (often with the implication of insincerity or exaggeration)” -​ Yet, human communication relies upon an “assumption of sincerity” without which “we could not successfully engage in the most basic communicative act” (Cohen, 1998) -​ Rhetorical Analysis is used to uncover probable truth in areas where there is no certainty -​ Aristotle’s Rhetoric: - Three books - A practice and a theory (for critical analysis) Aristotle’s Three Speech Situations = Three Types Of Speech: -​ Forensic or Judicial: - “Past” = to determine guilt or innocence (ex: court of law) -​ Epideictic: - “Present” = praise or blame, often at public events (ex: festivals, funerals, inaugurations) -​ Deliberative: - “Future” = to determine the best course of action Five Phases Of Working On A Speech Or Writing: 1.​ Inventio (Invention): -​ Questions that “address where arguments come from or … how orators “invent” arguments in relation to particular purposes” (Leach, 2000) -​ Gathering material: the relevant “elements and arguments” (Gripsrud, 2002) -​ Aristotle’s four “key questions”: 1.​ What is possible/not possible? 2.​ What has happened/not happened? 3.​ What will happen/won’t happen? 4.​ What is more or less important than what else? -​ Topos/Topoi, (Greek meaning: place): topic(s), locus/loci​  -​ Topoi and “content-related” topoi: stock formulas (ex: cause-and-effect, comparison, puns), cliche like situations to which audiences are likely to respond positively, the study of a shared social practice of argumentation and thus the study of a shared form of social life 2.​ Dispotio (Arrangement): -​ The rhetorical phase (sometimes referred to as a “canon”) explores how discourse is organized -​ By what logic does it support its ultimate claims? -​ How is the organization of the work related to the argument that it advances? -​ What effect might that have on audiences? -​ Might this feature persuade us that some things are more important than others? -​ Order of a speech: 1.​ Introduction = Exordium 2.​ Statement Of Facts = Narratio 3.​ Division = Partitio 4.​ Proof = Confirmatio 5.​ Refutation = Refutatio 6.​ Conclusion = Peroratio (Or Conclusio) -​ Narratio = that part of a speech or discourse in which the facts are presented, distinct from the other parts in the “moral” or “conclusion” was presented 3.​ Elocutio (Style): -​ It is important to consider style as an important part of the relationship between form and content (it means looking closely at the language used) -​ “Discourses are frequently persuasive on the basis of their style, which … is related to context” (Leach, 2000) -​ Ex: Academic essay writing vs. “agony aunt” advice column -​ News = highly ritualized style, more like complex theatre than information dissemination -​ These rituals and conventions define boundaries and limits of both the creation of discourse and the reception of discourse  -​ Rhetorical Imagery = the use of figurative language (ex: tropes, metaphor, metonymy) 4.​ Memoria (Memory): -​ The access that a speaker has to the content of his or her speech -​ Efforts were made to appear to be speaking extemporaneously (“off-the-cuff”), rather than speaking from a prepared script that has been memorized -​ Revived interest in cultural memory 5.​ Actio (Delivery): -​ The “act of presenting the speech to an audience” (Gripsrud, 2002) -​ Examines relationship between the texts’ dissemination and its content -​ If we examine a speaker’s “ethos” to speak on a subject, it can be due to the “inventio” of an argument, but also it could partly be in the way that the speaker delivers the talk -​ Can be explored textually by studying different dissemination patterns Means Of Persuasion - Ethos, Pathos, Lagos: -​ All three are essential ingredients for exploring context as a beginning to rhetorical analysis -​ They provide forms of arguments that figure in different types of persuasive discourse -​ Introductory forms from which persuasive arguments can be invented or developed Ethos: -​ Ethos = emotional appeals based upon the character of author or speaker -​ Ex: their credibility, legitimacy, or authority Pathos: -​ Pathos = appeals to the (powerful) emotions, usually contrasted, as in: - Fear vs. love - Joy vs. despair - Hate vs. acceptance -​ Gripsrud (2002) uses compassion as an example … used to appeal to audiences for aid for victims of famine -​ Not manipulation, but persuasion Lagos: -​ Lagos = word, speech and reasoning - not just “numbers” or “data” or “facts”, it can include statements -​ To examine how logical arguments work to convince us of their validity -​ Closely related to discussion of disposition Syllogism: -​ Three-tiered argument -​ Formal structure of logical reasoning - Moves from a statement about all cases (major premise), via a statement about all cases (minor premise), to a statement about a specific case or cases (conclusion) -​ Syllogisms are concluded with certainty if the premises are true and the structure valid (Cohen, 1998) - Major premise via minor premise leads to conclusion - Premises = simply statements of facts that serve as reasons for a claim -​ Example: - “All men are mortal” All A are B - “Socrates is a man” C is A - “Therefore, Socrates will die” Therefore, C is B Enthymeme: -​ Enthymeme = an informally-stated “syllogism” which omits either one of the premises or the conclusion, the omitted part must be clearly understood by the reader -​ The usual form of this logical shorthand omits the major premise -​ Example: - Since your application was submitted before April 10th, it will be considered - Omitted premise: all applications submitted before April 10 will be considered Metaphor: -​ Metaphor = an implied comparison achieved through a figurative use of words, the words are used not in their literal sense, but in one analogous to it -​ Illustrates the abstract  -​ Use A to see B -​ Generative Potential = create new meanings = vivid metaphors -​ Example: - Heart of gold, not to be taken literally Metonymy: -​ Metonymy = figure of speech that uses one word or phrase to represent another closely related word or phrase -​ Understand A in terms of its closely related symptom or correlate B -​ Makes the abstract concrete -​ Example: - The crown is used to represent the British monarchy Thwaites 1994 Reading: -​ Signifier = the sensory impression of the sign, the mental impression of the sound -​ Signified = the abstract concept the sign invokes, the general concept invoked -​ Signification = the relationship between signifier and signified, the way in which a sound impression “points to” or invokes an abstract concept -​ Parole (Utterance/Speech) = a given act or artifact of language, such as a spoken conversation, a postcard, a novel -​ Langue (Code/System/Language) = the language system, the system which enables such acts of parole to be produced -​ Parole = the act of speaking -​ Langage = Langue + Parole -​ Syntagm = an ordered array of signs combined according to certain rules -​ Paradigm = a set of signs, any of which are conceivably interchangeable within a given context, not fixed -​ Elements Of Paradigms + Rule = Syntagm Lecture Three: Ferdinand De Saussure (1857 - 1913): -​ Father of modern linguistics -​ Ancient and Indo-European languages  -​ Rejects previous theories of language (ex: “reflectionist”) Structuralism: -​ Structuralism = looks for laws, structures, and conventions that govern how people communicate in society -​ Langage = universal underlying structure that enables language to operate as a linguistic communication system -​ Langue = system of rules and conventions -​ Parole = actual utterances (ex: individual speech) -​ Synchronic -​ Diachronic -​ Sign = Signifier + Signified -​ Signifier = Sound-Image -​ Signified = Concept -​ Signifier & Signified = Abstract Mental Entities -​ Four Characteristics Of Linguistic Signs: 1.​ Arbitrary Nature Of The Sign: -​ Based on convention -​ Fixed by rule 2.​ Linear Nature Of Signifier: -​ Language = sequentially structured via time (oral/auditory) or space (writing) 3.​ Immutability: -​ Appear “fixed” as if chosen by language and no other -​ Inherent conservatism of language 4.​ Mutability: -​ Because of its “arbitrariness” -​ Only collectives (not individuals) can change language, although mostly not intentional -​ More or less rapid change of linguistic signs -​ Principle of change is based upon the principle of continuity Structuralist Anthropology: -​ Structuralist Anthropology Claude Lévi- Strauss (1908 - 2009): - Society structured around “binary oppositions” - Uncover meanings in any society by uncovering patterns and categories of oppositions - Binary Oppositions = deep underlying structures spoken unconsciously by members of society (ex: human/non-human, nature/culture) - Major influence on film studies Semiotics: -​ Also known as “semiology” -​ Semiology = the study of the signs -​ “Science of communication and sign systems … of the ways people understand phenomena and organize them mentally, and of the ways in which they devise means for transmitting that understanding and for sharing it with others” Marcel Danesi (1946) -​ Language is a system of signs, it is form, not substance -​ Langage = Langue + Parole -​ Langue = system of rules and conventions - Necessary to study the system of rules and constraints that make the generation of meanings possible -​ Parole = Utterance or speech, actual use and examples of “language in use” -​ Icon = signifies through likeness - Iconic = resembles what it represents - Ex: Silhouette of a cat -​ Index = signifies through physical connection - Indexical = direct link, a logical connection, associated with what it is a sign of - Ex: Paw prints of a cat -​ Symbol = signifies through arbitrary social convention - Symbolic = arbitrary link or by convention - Ex: The word cat -​ Linguistic sign is arbitrary, difference or distinction from other signs -​ Codes = meanings of specific signs are only understood in relation to each other  -​ Codes organize the particular meanings of signs in a in a particular arrangement or context (ex: traffic lights, weddings, funeral) -​ Paradigm = choice/selection (vertical) -​ Syntagm = sequence/combination (horizontal) -​ Meaning = always the result of the interplay of relationships of selection and combination made possible by the underlying structure Mythology: -​ Mythology = Semiology + Ideology -​ Semiology = science of forms -​ Ideology = historical science -​ Barthe’s “Myths”: - Not the same as Ancient Greek or Roman myths - Can only be based on history (ex:. not “eternal”) - Pictures, objects, not just words become a kind of writing as soon as they are meaningful - Myth is not defined by the object of its message, but by the way in which it utters this message - Myth = a type of speech, chosen by history, it cannot possibly evolve from the nature of things - Form not content → a mode of signification - Myth arises out of the 2nd (or 3rd) order of signification Mythology - 1st Order Of Signification = Denotation: -​ Denotation = literal meaning -​ Use of language to mean what it says -​ Obvious meaning of the sign Mythology - 2nd Order Of Signification = Connotation: -​ Connotation = associations produced by the first denotative order of significations -​ Produces associative, expressive, or evaluative meanings Mythology - 2nd/3rd Order Of Signification = Myth: -​ Myth = a type of depoliticized speech, a type of speech about social realities which supports (the dominant) ideology by taking these realities outside the arena of political debate -​ Made to appear as “natural” and “eternal” -​ Constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things … lose the memory that they were once made Lecture Four: Ideological Analysis: -​ Does the media promote a “dominant ideology” or an “oppositional ideology"? -​ Do they provide one “worldview” (ideology) or “contradictory messages”? -​ Media = sites of (dispute over) representations - Not single text, but across media - Scholars compare media representations with “real world” - Movements challenge media over representations (ex: unions, women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ, Indigenous) -​ How is ideology communicated and represented via language and discourse? -​ Communicative practices? - Advertising - Marketing - Public Relations (Propaganda) - Journalism - Public Advocacy (Rhetoric) - Street Speaking/Assembly - Protests/Demonstrations -​ Through everyday rituals? - Ex: Arriving at school or work - Ex: Like singing O Canada every morning in K-12 public schools Karl Marx “Idealism” vs. “Materialism”: -​ Marx rejected idealism, which was associated with Hegel  -​ Marx connected materialism to the uneven distribution of resources and power in society Marx’s Base/Superstructure Model: -​ Ideologies based within social classes - A sense of coherence and community - To promote objective, material interests -​ Bourgeois (Ruling Class) = capitalist ideology - “Dominant ideology” because of economic power -​ Proletarian (Working Class) = socialist ideology Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA): -​ Louis Althusser (1918 - 1990): - “Structuralist Marxist” philosopher - Rejects base/superstructure formulation and “econism” (economic determinism or “vulgar Marxism” -​ No class can hold State power over a long period without at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the State Ideological Apparatuses -​ Ideology = determining force shaping “consciousness” and embodied in ISAs material “signifying practices” -​ Ideology has very little to do with “consciousness” – it is profoundly “unconscious” -​ ISAs = private and public = doesn’t matter but function does - Educational ISAs (ex: schools, universities) - Family ISA - Religious ISAs (ex: churches, temples) -​ RSAs = Repressive State Apparatus - Police, local, provincial, and national - Army - Prisons - Althuser says RSAs = public Ideology: -​ Ideology = “represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (Althusser)  -​ Ideology = functions via ideas and images lend “false sense of coherence, unity and collectivity” even as it reinforces individual’s sense of being “unique” -​ Ideology transforms human beings into “subjects,” leading them to see themselves as “self-determining agents” when in fact they are shaped by ideological processes -​ Althusser positions “science” against “ideology” - Science produces/constructs its objects of knowledge and problematics - Theory is a necessary component of science for accomplishing the above - Theoretical knowledge can penetrate beneath mere appearances to more fundamental aspects of reality - Scientific thinking necessitates an “epistemological break” with common sense, ideology, and philosophy -​ In Althusser’s theory, capitalist society is “monolithic” - There is no space to account for internal conflict Ideology As Communication: -​ A particular form of instrumental communication -​ A communicative strategy that aims at legitimating dominative interests by specific communication strategies -​ Successful because … actively lived by human subjects and associated experiences, feelings, desires, sentiments and subjectivities in everyday life Interpellation (Hailing): -​ Ideology = interpellates (hails) individuals as “subjects - Ideology provides “identificatory positions that we believe we have chosen freely” -​ Rituals = practices through which we are interpellated, these practice are “inscribed within the material existence of an ideological apparatus” Lecture Five: “Keynesianism” - Welfare State Capitalism: -​ John Maynard Keynes was a British economist known as the father of “macroeconomics” -​ Keynes wanted to save capitalism from itself -​ State needs to intervene when market fails (ex: the 1930s’s Great Depression) -​ Creates demands when business fails  -​ Employs workers when unemployed -​ Adopted wholesale by governments from right to left from the 1930s - 1970s “Keynesianism” vs. “Neoliberalism” USA 1947 - 2007: -​ “Golden Age” of Capitalism: Keynesian policies = save capitalism via government intervention in economy -​ “Neoliberal” Capitalism = state intervention into economy to privatize public goods/services - Socialize risks and costs, and privatize profits - Neoliberalism = new liberalism = turn away from capitalist welfare state Karl Marx: -​ Class struggle = the motor of history -​ Capital = capital is the amount of wealth that is used in making profits -​ For Marx, capital is the variable excess that is pulled out of labour power to produce surplus value, was born of the advent of money in the 16th century -​ Two Types Of Capital: 1.​ Variable Capital -​ Ex: Human labour 2.​ Constant Capital -​ Ex: Raw materials and equipment Mode Of Production: Commodity, Use Value, Exchange Value: -​ The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” its unit being a single commodity -​ A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. It’s analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological nineties -​ Use Value: the utility of a thing makes it a use value … use-values become a reality only by use or consumption, - Practical value - Individual use - Concrete labour  -​ Exchange Value: a relation, as the proportion in which values in use of one sort are exchanged for those of another sort - An equation of commensurability - Value of commodity - Abstract labour - Ex: must be capable of being expressed in terms of something common to them all - But exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterised by a total abstraction from use value -​ Socially Necessary Labour Time = a key to exchange value, the value that inheres in the commodity of the abstract labour used to produce it, a way of describing average levels of labour productivity in relation to social needs embodied in commodities Commodity Fetishism: -​ Law of value, the fetishism of commodities -​ Commodities seem to be invested with “magical properties” -​ Since labour is alienated, commodities come to take on the social relations that people no longer have -​ Commodities take on a social life through their exchange such that, rather than seeing relationships between people, we see relationships between things -​ The Double Mystification Of Commodity Fetishism (Mosco): 1.​ Commodities conceal social relationship between capital and labour by naturalizing it 2.​ Commodities become reified: take on a life of their own via commodification process → shape people and society Commodity: -​ Commodity = a good or service that is bought, sold, or traded -​ A thing can be a use-value, without having value … whenever its utility to man is not due to labour … air, virgin soil, natural meadows -​ A thing can be useful, and a product of human labour, without being a commodity -​ Two Kinds Of Commodities: 1.​ Money  -​ Historically → commodity whose value determined by “average socially necessary labour time” expended in production -​ Evolving abstraction where value of money commodity (ex: gold, silver) replaced by representation and promise (ex: copper coins, paper bills) and increasingly a pure abstraction as a number expressive of price/value relationships 2.​ Labour Power -​ Exchange relation of labour-power commodity = fundamental relation of capitalist mode of production -​ Capitalist buys your time (ex: ability to labour), in exchange for the “fruits” of your labour belong to the capitalist -​ Unique commodity → power to create greater value than its initial worth -​ Its value = value of socially necessary labour time producing basic goods and social necessities to sustain life if worker had produced them -​ Commodity values change because sensitive to changes in productivity, technology, and other factors that change its value -​ Commodification = transforming use values into exchange values -​ Two Dimensions Of Commodification: 1.​ Communication processes and technology contribute to commodification in economy 2.​ Commodification processes penetrate communication processes and institutions which influence “communication as a social practice” -​ Immanent Commodification = when new commodities are produced by commodities themselves (ex: the ratings commodity or the credit rating commodity), a recursive process -​ Externalizing Commodification = the commodification of things that had been left outside of commodity exchange or were only partially touched by it (ex: water, education, libraries, air)  -​ The Audience Commodity (Dallas Smythe 1977): mass media are constituted out of the process in which audiences, as the primary commodity of mass media, are delivered to advertisers Surplus Value: -​ What is in excess of labour cost that is available for appropriation/exploitation and is the basis for capital accumulation: profit -​ Surplus Value = created by the extra work that a worker is compelled to do above and beyond that which is required to survive and live comfortably -​ Generally appropriated by the capitalist class -​ Absolute Surplus Value = the extension of the work day for the same wage → (you take work home, to your child’s hockey practice, to a cafe on the weekend, to bed) -​ Relative Surplus Value = the extension of productivity by extracting more labour out of a given unit of labour by means of measuring and monitoring systems (ex: scientific management, time-motion studies) Content: -​ Capital’s success commodifying content = state of struggle -​ Consumers also resist -​ Communication = special commodity - Surplus value - Shapes consciousness -​ New media = new means of commodification