33 Media and communication Anthropology

Naila Ansari

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Definition of Media Anthropology
2. Disciplinary Identity of Media Anthropology
3. Emergence of Media Anthropology
4. Media Anthropological Studies
5. Aim of Media Anthropology
6. Media, Communication and Anthropology
7. Ethnographic contexts
8. Scope and Areas of Work
9. Research Branch
10. Centrality of Communication in Human
11. Media and Expressive Culture
12. Anthropological Approach & Concept to Mass Media Summary

Learning Objectives

• To able to define Media Anthropology
• To determine the Disciplinary identity of Media Anthropology
• To be able to describe Emergence of Media Anthropology
• To able to examining various Studies of Media Anthropology
• To able to describe the Aim, Scope, and distinct Research in Media Anthropology
• To able to examining various Anthropological Approach & Concept to Mass Media

Introduction

Media anthropology is a rapidly developing new field of interdisciplinary studies. The media anthropology studies conducted in India and Asian subcontinent in last two decades range from popular visual culture to film industries, curatorial strategies and contemporary art practices and markets, from urbanization processes to transnational migration. Most of the Asian and Indian media anthropological studies have looked at images and media as mediators and sources of transcultural encounters and entanglements. Anthropologists approach Media Anthropology from different directions with different histories and for different purposes. It is not only natural but productive that they would make differing choices of concepts, methods, and interpretations.

The anthropology of media is a fairly inter-disciplinary area, with a wide range of other influences. The theories used in the anthropology of media range from practice approaches, associated with theorists, as well as discussions of the appropriation and adaptation of new technologies and practices. Theoretical approaches have also been adopted from visual anthropology and from film theory, as well as from studies of ritual and performance studies (e.g. dance and theatre), studies of consumption, audience reception in media studies, new media and network theories, theories of globalisation, theories of international civil society, and discussions on participatory communications and governance in development studies.

1. Definition of Media Anthropology

Anthropology of media (also anthropology of mass media, media anthropology) is an area of study within social or cultural anthropology that emphasizes ethnographic studies as a means of understanding producers, audiences, and other cultural and social aspects of mass media. Media anthropology contains multiple perspectives, each the product of different intellectual trends, in different fields. Briefly, it represents both the use of anthropological concepts and methods within media studies and the study of the media by anthropologists. It may be a new interdisciplinary convergence; it could become an established field of inter-disciplinary studies, or even a new discipline.

A common sense definition for media anthropology would say that it represents the application of instruments (theories, concepts, research methods) from a field of science, cultural anthropology, onto an investigated object, in this case media (i.e. communication mediated by technologies and institutions, be it mass or group, “big” or “small”. It exactly what suggested one of the first approaches to the field: “Media anthropology is an awareness of the interaction (both real and potential) between the various academic and applied aspects of anthropology and the multitude of media.

2. Disciplinary Identity of Media Anthropology

In the case of media anthropology, the fact that various researchers do not assume that clear disciplinary identity (with roots in sociology, cultural studies, narratology, history, etc) yet use concepts specific to cultural anthropology, as well as research methods intimately related to this science (ethnographic methods), may appear as a random meeting, and a passing experience. Especially since the authorized representatives of cultural anthropology have treated these attempts with scepticism.

On the other hand, border-crossing and interpreting mass media phenomena from a cultural anthropology perspective can also be understood as the beginning of delineating a new sub-discipline of cultural anthropology, or of communication studies, a sub-discipline that has as its research object a specific form of cultural creation the mass media, or as the first step in the creation of a new anthropological frame for the study of the global and mediated cultural phenomena.

3. Emergence of Media Anthropology

Studies like

‘Communication and Cultural Development: a Multidimensional Analysis’ by George A. Bernett in 1981,

‘The Effects of Television Viewing: a Cross-Cultural Perspective’ conducted by Susan Kent in 1985

‘Culture/Media: A (mild) Polemic’ by Faye Ginsburg in 1994

The above mention studies initiated debate at various intellectual platforms in India on how and in what ways television programmes produce culture and how this culture is defining people‟s behaviour. The study argued that the human process of understanding consists of depositing those modes of being which define us into cultural elements. In other words, we learn how to behave, so to speak, by going to the cultural elements which we have already created. Explain about how culture is transmitted through mass media, especially television, and how this transmission of culture has shaped the human society. All these studies brought mass media to the centre stage of anthropology and communication studies.

4. Media Anthropological Studies

• Anthropologists have studied the relationship between television and culture and how social and cultural messages are carried forward in the society by television and other visual media and how it integrates various elements in human society.
• These studies laid a foundation for media anthropology to establish how mass media became the vehicle of transmission of culture in the process of evolution of societies. So the study of media anthropology explores and expands with the understanding that whatever happened in the domain of culture is mostly because of media.
• The studies were mostly focused on the post liberal challenges of transculturation and the legitimate role of media in the formation of global imaginaries.
• The media anthropological studies focus more on images and media as ideal means to explore shifting asymmetries of cultural flows.
• The studies have a close ethnographic look at the multiple layers of social, cultural, political and historical contexts and processes through which these asymmetrical flows of visualises have emerged and shaped
• The media anthropological studies are mostly in the form of ethnography of reception carried out largely under the banner of cultural studies. The studies mostly focus on the role of culture in exercising power both political and socio-cultural.

4. Media Anthropological Studies

The aim of media anthropologists is to provide the general public with entertaining, relevant anthropological background information through the public media. This quarterly newsletter disseminates information, promotes awareness of present physical and social issues, and offers a means of intercommunication on the topic of Media Anthropology. Typical issues of discuss current matters of concern. To media anthropologists; announce available and current films, periodicals, publications, seminars, arid conferences: list audio-visual tools, manuals, and guides and describe opportunities, Ventures, and Studied distinct of multimedia Materials, mostly annotated, contain complete bibliographic information.

6. Media, Communication and Anthropology

Media Anthropology is an area of study within social or cultural anthropology and is now a days a part of media and cultural studies that deals with the social and cultural aspects of mass media. Media anthropology is an inter-disciplinary stream of study influenced by the approaches and practices taking place in Visual Anthropology, Film and Performance studies and Development Communication. Media anthropology generally represents the application of instruments (theories, concepts, methods, approaches, tools and techniques) to understand media studies from a socio-anthropological perspective. Social scientists and media anthropologists generally consider media anthropology as an approach to understand the interaction between various academic and applied aspects of anthropology and the multitude of media.

This phenomenon is not new, because several sciences can claim the interpretation of the same social system (history of tourism, sociology of tourism, geography of tourism, anthropology of tourism). In this case, besides older actors of mass media research such as sociology, economics, history, law, ethics, and psychology, anthropology as well can find a place under the sun of mass media, interpreting, with its own tools, the same realities interpreted, “media anthropology grows out of the anthropology of modern societies, on one hand, and the cultural turn in media studies, on the other. It turns its attention from “exotic” to mundane and from “indigenous” to manufactured culture while preserving the methodological and conceptual assets of earlier anthropological tradition. It prepares media studies for more complete engagement with the symbolic construction of reality and the fundamental importance of symbolic structures, myth, and ritual in everyday life.” But in the case of media anthropology things are not simple, firstly because of the ambivalent relationship between the sciences (now) in dialogue: for cultural anthropology, confronted with an identity crisis, it would be reluctant to widen its borders, while mass media, confronted with a growth crisis, has the tendency to lose its identity by extending without limits toward the most heterogeneous areas of social life.

One important debate is about whether classical ethnography is necessary to everything called anthropological, or is the adaptation called anthropological, or is the adaptation of the spirit of ethnography in media and cultural studies legitimately anthropologists? Applying ethnographic method to modern societies had already produced a dispute regarding methodological purity within anthropology, even before ethnographic ideas were widely adopted.

7. Ethnographic Contexts

The types of ethnographic contexts explored in the anthropology of media range from contexts of media production (e.g., ethnographies of newsrooms in newspapers, journalists in the field, film production) to contexts of media reception, following audiences in their everyday responses to media. Other types include cyber anthropology, a relatively new area of internet research, as well as ethnographies of other areas of research which happen to involve media, such as development work, social movements, human rights or health education.

8. Scope and Areas of Work

The scope of media anthropology is tremendous. It offers an excellent opportunity to communication scholars having a background in social sciences and humanities (with a good understanding of social-cultural anthropology) along with communication to study how media institutions in transitional societies can best manage the communication activities and tools to facilitate cultural modernization. There is a peculiarly intimate relationship between the social, cultural and communication process.

Media anthropology provides a new ethnographically informed, historically grounded and context-sensitive approach to communication scholars and cultural scientists to study the ways in which people use and make sense of media technologies. The subject has great potential to explore the dynamics of social and cultural processes of media consumption, production and circulation.

As far as the growth and scope of the subject is concerned, media anthropology grows out of the anthropology of modern societies and their culture finding a place under the broad arena of mass media. It is different from cultural anthropology as it turns its attention from „exotic‟ to „mundane‟ and from „indigenous‟ to „manufactured culture‟ while preserving the methodological and conceptual assets of anthropological tradition. The study of media anthropology in communication studies is gaining a lot of attention these days because it prepares media practitioners for more complete engagement with the symbolic construction of reality and the fundamental importance of symbolic structures, myth and rituals in everyday life. Media Anthropology is a multidisciplinary field of study having a wide scope for the graduates from the fields of Communication, Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology, and Philosophy. Media anthropology as a practice provides the scholars two main branches/areas to build a career–

9. Research Branch

Anthropology of media examines the relationships between people and media. This emphasis on people is demonstrated through the ethnographic approach. This allows for knowledge construction that is discipline specific, and which moves across disciplines. The connections are located in the grounded approaches to knowing about people and where media in all its various forms are inextricably part of today’s social settings. The implications for anthropology ‘media studies’ relate to the issue of knowledge construction and how methodological and paradigmatic approaches have been applied as also issues of the integrity of these applications. This has led to debate and controversy in media studies where media/cultural studies scholars have challenged the slipshod application of ethnography in the so-called ethnographic turn of the 1980s and where they make distinctions between ‘ethnography’ and ‘proper ethnography.’ This suggests particular emphasis on the anthropological as a set of knowledge practices that will yield acceptable results in studying people and media and where this approach becomes important through the focus on people. This branch especially deals with studies related to media structures, function, process, impact etc of media information, technologies, mediums, professionals, audience and control.

This branch deals with the communication of anthropological information and insights through media channels in widely acceptable styles and formats. The branch also provides an opportunity to the scholars to promote anthropology in various media by influencing journalism practices to who, what, when, where and how, in order to create an alternative method of gathering and presenting information that can help to fill the educational vacuum, not with more detail, but with more perspective.

10. Centrality of Communication in Human

Anthropology has long been concerned with the centrality of communication in human experience. Communication impacts relations of truth, evidentiality, power, identity, wellness, and the sacred, among others. Narrative, ritual speech, bureaucratic discourse, scientific argument, and political slogans are just some of the myriad ways that communication manifests and matters in human life. In recent years, anthropologists have increasingly turned their attention to mass media, new media, and state discourse, as additional types of communication forms that impact society, culture, power, global relations, and everyday life. A vibrant interdisciplinary community of scholars both within anthropology and outside anthropology shares a focus on media, communication and culture. Research areas include: media ethnography, cultures of media production and media consumption, media power, new media, ethnographic film, visual culture, digital culture, digital scholarship, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and rhetoric.

Mass media involve technological transformation of this system of communication in various ways and to different ends. The media thus include not only books, films, television, videos, magazines, newspapers, and radio, but billboards, comic books, e-mail, the World Wide Web, telephones, and many other technologies. The key question for the anthropologist are how these technologies operate to mediate human communication, and how such mediation is embedded in broader social and historical processes.

11. Media and Expressive Culture

The media have as one of their primary and manifest functions the expression of social and cultural information, clearly makes them part of the field of expressive culture. All media, moreover, explicitly seek to affect human beings, and consumers of media intentionally constitute themselves as audience in order to be affected. Media messages can persuade (seduce, compel) us. They can inform (educate, provoke, brainwash) us. And they can give us pleasure in the form of escape, laughter, or insight. In more than one way, this was an interesting period in the history of Indian Anthropology, where a great deal of emphasis was laid on applications of anthropology for rural and tribal development. Communication was seen as an essential ingredient to reach out to remote and isolated tribal and rural communities. The aim was to accept new ways of living and adopting technologies that would help the rural and tribal population produce more food and are part of those who live in better material comfort. In other words, economic development was at the core of the national ethos for the betterment of remote rural and tribal areas identified for change, in agriculture, nutrition and family planning.

Education was seen as a precondition for adoption of innovation. The entire national climate was charged with centralized planning to bring about desired change.

Visual documentation allows a broader and holistic comprehension of cultural reality, and to a large extent, breaks the language barrier. While visuals give accurate depiction, the selection of a sequence of events, its juxtaposition with other events and the very selection of live events creates a composite visual mosaic that could create an illusionary or distorted comprehension of culture.

12. Anthropological Approach & Concept to Mass Media

These five and more represent the divergent intellectual orientations that may meet in this territory we have recently taken to calling Media Anthropology. Media anthropology is, to one degree or another, in varying ways and for varying purposes, the use of anthropological concepts and methods in the study of the media.

• In one group are anthropologists who have recently turned their attention more systematically toward the media.
• Some are studying the production and consumption of media in many of the same settings and using more or less the same methods traditionally used in ethnographies of indigenous, village, and tribal life, others transfer those methods to the work-place setting of media production, and others are engaging whole new questions about transnational cultural flows, media systems, business and industry, and more.
• Another group includes communication and media scholars who began borrowing concepts of ritual, myth, religion, symbolic structure and process from anthropological theory to forge an alternative approach to media studies.
• A third approach to media anthropology grew out of the ethnographic turn that swept the humanities and social sciences, became the new mainstream in media studies, and ethnographies of television viewers, fans of popular music, and other forms of audience reception studies became much more common
• Fourth are the visual anthropologists, ethnographic filmmakers, and others who for decades had been pursuing many of these interests in their own way, under the guidance of another set of questions and conceptual vocabularies.
• Yet a fifth approach would be the myth and symbol tradition of interpreting texts with an abstractly anthropological orientation, informed by anthropological reading but not its methods.

Media anthropology is the label that has most recently come into use for a territory of contact between distinct fields. In the anthropological approach to mass media, several established concepts are finding relatively new uses:

• Culture (acculturation, culture change, cultural diffusion, assimilation, globalization),
• Religion (cult, sacred and profane, transcendence, belief, cosmology, liturgical order themes and motifs),
• Ritual (ceremony, magic, commemoration, celebration),
• Narrative,
• Performance,
• Representation,
• Symbol

These are all places where anthropologists and media scholars take turns talking and the various points of view in the field are presented as side-by-side alternatives.

Summary

Communication is a key tool that anthropologists use to understand social and cultural environment by focusing on each and every aspect of the social and cultural life of a nation. In social and cultural anthropology, communication is used to educate and train people to study and analyze the nature and state of specific social and cultural structures and institutions which widely affect the process of social and cultural development in the society. The approach is to understand the media and cultural process as institutions, as workplaces, as communicative practices, as cultural products, as social activities, as aesthetic forms, as historical developments and alike. The studies are mostly concerned with the understanding of the relationship between media institutions/channels and the patterns of socio-cultural changes basic to the problems of contemporary nation building.

So, we can see media anthropology as a field within the broad discipline of social sciences and humanities dealing with the relationship between the mass media and culture. The main focus of the study is more about how culture is transmitted through the mass media, and the media process or system by means of which society is shaped. Anthropology is the social science, studying culture, whereas media anthropology is the specific field which deals with the whole process through which culture shapes human beings through the mass media.