1. MEP 203 CONTEMPORARY MEDIA THEORY
8. POSTMODERNITY AND INFORMATION SOCIETY

2. From modernity to postmodernity
MODERNITY – industrialisation, science, capitalism, metropolitanism, technological development, individualism
MODERNISM – art and culture assoc. with MODERNITY: ‘high’ culture, elitist in its condemnation of mass culture
POSTMODERNITY – rejects the canon of modernism, embraces popular culture

3. Key postmodern ideas The disappearance of history
Intertextuality and pastiche
Decline of meta-narratives (inc. the concept of high art / culture)
Hyperreality and simulation
Media saturation
Information society

4. Jameson (1991) Postmodernism
POSTMODERNITY = PASTICHE + INTERTEXTUALITY
History can no longer be represented by “postmodernist ‘nostalgia’ art” (p. 198)
Individual style / originality is unavailable
Postmodern texts are not authentic, they pastiche (mimic) parts of other texts

5. Lyotard (1984) The Postmodern Condition
POSTMODERNITY = breakdown of meta-narratives (e.g. Bible, Newtonian Physics)
2 types of narrative legitimation:
‘SPECULATION’ – science as the quest for knowledge and truth
‘EMANCIPATION’ – knowledge as freedom
Postmodern culture delegitimation of knowledge through power struggles

6. Baudrillard (1983) Simulations
POSTMODERNITY = HYPERREAL
“Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation.” (p. 172)
MEDIA SATURATION means simulations of ‘the real’ supersede any sense of reality

7. Information society
Some theorists (Bell, Toffler) argue that the post-industrial, postmodern age improves quality of life, leads to better privatised and public services, a ‘third wave’ of de-massified media heterogeneity
A post-industrialist shift from material to human resources (Bell 1974)
Others (Castells, Lyon) are more cautious – information can exclude and be used for political or military ends as well as liberating peoples

8. Postmodern media theory - criticisms
Ahistorical – ignores history as a resource for knowledge
Usually about TEXTS but what about CONTEXTS / AUDIENCES / PRODUCERS
Limited focus on ‘the contemporary’ but some postmodern ideas have a history (e.g. intertextuality is age-old)
Cynical about social research