Exploring the Relationship between Media and Culture: A Cultural Studies Perspective

Abstract

This paper attempts to explore the multiple layers that intervene in the relationship between media and culture. The authors argue that media products and messages have always been constructed to either serve the dominant elite’s ideology, gain public consent, or consolidate racial and gender stereotypes. Media forms, types and genres are cultural filters or ideological paradigms targetting the audiences’ Hedonist propensity for visual pleasure. In his book Media Culture, Douglas Kellner (1995) highlights the sinuous relationship between media and culture by stating that media culture has emerged whereby sounds and spectacles help produce the fabric of everyday life and help shape political views and social behavior. When we look at media from a cultural studies perspective, we become conscious of its sweeping impact on people’s political views and identity. Noam Chomsky (1988) argues that media “manufactures consent”, therefore confirming the manipulative facet of media culture through his five filters: ownership, advertising, media elite, flak and common enemy. With the increasing normalization of digital technology, “techno-culture” has taken on a more incisive turn by driving people to keep swinging between online and offline cultures. Through virtual and immersive actions, new cultural forms have been invented, namely e-society, cyber communities and cultural identities. Hence, by adopting a cultural studies perspective, this paper attempts to provide a theoretical framework for media culture by exploring the concepts of “techno-culture”, Chomsky’s and Herman’s five filters, and cyberculture.