Readings and Assignment Schedule: Mass Media in Modern Society

Sociology 243, Spring 2006, 2:30 - 3:20 MWF, L403 Lafayette

Todd Gitlin's The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1980/2002) and Eileen Meehan, Why TV Is Not Our Fault : Television Programming, Viewers, and Who's Really in Control (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005) will be available in the UVM bookstore. All other readings can be accessed by clicking below. 

Part I, Media and Social Movements: the Case of the 1960s Student Movement 

Week 1 (1/18, 1/20)

Basic Problems in the Sociology of Media

Week 2 (1/23, 1/25, 1/27)

Gitlin 1- 40. 

Thomas König, "Frame Analysis: A Primer," http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/mmethods/resources/links/frames_primer.html 

Friday author overview: Todd Gitlin (Streeter)

Week 3 (1/30, 2/1, 2/3)

Gitlin, 40-125; view video, "War at Home"

Friday author overview: W. Lance Bennett, Noam Chomsky (on politics and media)

Week 4 (2/6, 2/8, 2/10)

Gitlin, 127-204

Friday author overview: Theodore Glasser, John Hartley

Week 5 (2/13, 2/15, 2/17)

Gitlin, 205-248

Friday author overview: Barbie Zelizer, John Fiske

****Research paper proposals due 2/17 ****

Week 6 (2/22, 2/24)

Gitlin, 249 - 292

Friday author overview: Stuart Hall

Part II, The Political Economy of Media Institutions: the Case of Network Television

Week 7 (2/27, 3/1, 3/3) 

Robert W. McChesney, "Policing the Thinkable," http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article.jsp?id=8&debateId=24&articleId=56

Benjamin Compaine, "The myths of encroaching global media ownership," http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article.jsp?id=8&debateId=24&articleId=87#

Friday author overview: Robert McChesney, Benjamin Compaine

Week 8 (3/6, 3/8, 3/10)

Meehan, 1-52

Friday author overview: Douglas Kellner, George Gerbner

Week 9 (3/13, 3/15, 3/17)

Meehan, 53-116

Friday author overview: Joanne Cantor, Shanto Iyengar

Week 10 (3/27, 3/29, 3/31)

Meehan, 117-124

***** Annotated Bibliographies due 3/31 *****

Part III: Charting the Media Future

Week 11 (4/3, 4/5, 4/7): Politics and Blogs

Friday author overview: Lawrence Lessig,  Sherry Turkle

***** Rough Drafts due 4/10 *****

Week 12 (4/10, 4/12, 4/14): the Emerging New Terrain

Friday author overview: Lynn Spigel, Andrew Feenberg

Week 13 (4/17, 4/19, 4/21)

Week 14 (4/24, 4/26, 4/28)

Week 15 (5/1, 5/3)