1 - Smythe first chief economist for the FCC 1943-48
debates about PE of media - Robert Babe traces PE to Harold Innis and Adorno
2- Jhally (1990 p. 73) & Babe (2000, p. 132-134) - Smythe exaggerates his materialist break from ideology, remaining focused on the mediation of consciousness.
2 - Industry practice - before radio, "trade journals touted the capacity of a commercial press to command the attention of valuable audiences (Marchand, 1985) and to manufacture consumer consciousness (Ewen, 1976). (brief history in reading follows)
3 - McGuigan argues that the first sentence of blindspot is to start a debate and that Smythe pioneered this debate of communication, capital, consciousness, and power relations
3 - materialist view: media institutions are both world-making and world-made. They tune consciousness (attention??) toward certain emphases (Turow 1997)
4 - audience commodity is dialectical - ad-supported media produce audiences as both economic & social-cultural products (Smythe, 1981, p. 13)
4 - Two markets - market of consumers (for sale to advertisers) and market for consumers (to buy advertisers products)
4 - Meehan (2005) - producing audiences is an organizing system that results in the empowerment of industrial capitalists, advertisers, market researchers, & audience surveillance firms that constrain certain ideas and values
These are anchored in cliches about consumers having agency in a free marketplace (Napoli, 1999). This favors consumers and commerce over citizens and community.
5 - It is important to understand the economic & social production of consumers. The lynchpin to this is alienation for Smythe, which is the denial of "free conscious activity" to him.
Our existence in consumer capitalism is mediated by discourse through and about objects (such as through TV and about the products being marketed).
6- Smythe did not favor textual analysis, but rather preferred a general appraisal - a totality of TV in general. (Sounds like part McLuhan - it's not what you watch, but rather that you watch TV.)
"Time spent watching television is time spent not doing something else (Smythe, 1977, 6-7).
Are our values cultivated from experiences with people or commodities? Smythe argued that we are alienated from the reproduction of ourselves because of commercial mediation in our culture.
Digtal Labor: Marxist & Institutional Approaches
8 - Marxist Approach: materialism for Smythe is "the actual processes which link people together in social production and social consumption." Thus, digital labor (such as social media) can be lnked to Capital Vol 1 - labor theory of value
However, this viewpoint is met with doubts from: Hesmondalgh, Caraway, Lebowitz, Magder:
Media cannot own audiences' labor power - which Mosco tends to agree (2009, p.137)
Institutional Approach: Meehan, Napoli
audiences are not naturally occurring - they are constructions that are commodified as ratings and do not exist objectively in media use. Audiences are produced as discrete packets of information
9 - Napoli (2011) - audience production is linked to the development of information technologies as well as the form & content of media messages
Institutional Approach is the counterpoint to the Marxist Approach.
However, problematic - if audiences cannot be owned, then how are they commoditized as discrete packages of information that exist only in market relations?
Can these two approaches be complementary? Smythe believes so and borrows from both. Also affirmed in Jhally, Meehan, Melody, Mosco, and Murdock.
Data & Digital Surveillance
Greg Elmer (2004) - studies a "personal information economy"
9-10 - Andrejevic (2004) - consumption becomes subject to scientific management techniques (Taylorism) previously honed for production
10 - McStay (2011) probes policies enabling inspection of data collected by ISPs
McGuigan goes on to include a complete lit review of other exemplary studies
10 - Andrejevic (2013) - data has commodity value but also feedback values as a predictor of behavior and proclivities (tendencies)
11 - Monopoly & Dependency Beyond Capitalist Core
Smythe viewed commercial media as monopoly capitalism - a handful of elites control global markets & set policy agendas ex. Nielsen, market consolidation (Microsoft, Intel)
12 - Neo-liberal imperatives colored policy debates - UNESCO forum on NWICO (Pickard 2007)
Advertising, Branding, and Commodification of Human Experience:
15 - TV remainds the "surest investment for marketers"
TV is an industry, a milieu of culture & citizenship, important field of social sciences & humanities research, interactive marketplace. Thus, Smythe's thesis is more germane than ever.
"Changes in technology are mutually constituted with the restructuring of media businesses" - to commercialize it & commodify it (such as data)
Critique of Technology
16 - Smythe wanted to temper celebratory thoughts about technological progress.
Mosco - 2004 - The Digital Sublime - he unravels celebratory mythologies of technological determinism
James Carey - 2009 - also covers these myths
16 - D. Schiller, Barney, Dyer-Witheford, all traingulate the historical, philosophical, and theorectical vectors of digital tech in capitalism.
17 - Turow - technology segments audiences for packaging to advertisers
-media convergence is the ad industry's efforts "to maximize the entire system's potential for selling" (p.2)
Critical & Administrative Research
18 - Smythe asserts that administrative research can be an important resource for critical theory and policy analysis (1983, p. 118-120).
example - trade publications provide insight into the relations between media players and advertisers.
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