Media Representations: Part 1 – Traditional Marxism

Continuing the sociology of the media theme that began with moral and amoral panics, this series of posts looks at the idea of media representations from a range of different perspectives. For traditional Marxism, economic power is a key variable; those who own the means of physical production are always the most powerful class and […]

Media Representations: Part 2 – Neo-Marxism

This approach addresses the theoretical weaknesses of traditional Marxism by explaining media representations in terms of ruling class cohesion. The role of the media is not necessarily to divide or scapegoat the lower classes as a way of controlling their behaviour; rather, media representations are a way of creating and maintaining an elite’s sense of […]

Media Representations: Part 3 – Feminism

While the focus for all kinds of feminism is on how and why media representations contribute to female inequality, different approaches produce different forms of explanation. Liberal feminism generally focuses on how the mass media can be purged of sexist assumptions and representations, such that women in particular are neither stereotyped into a narrow range […]

Media Representations: Part 4 – Pluralism

Pluralist explanations recognise a variety of different media representations of categories such as gender. They also emphasise the importance of the role of the audience in interpreting such representations – ideas that relate to two dominant themes in pluralist explanations – diversity and choice. In terms of diversity, contemporary media and audiences are characterised more […]

Media Representations: Part 5 – Postmodernism

While Marxist and Feminist perspectives generally discuss media representations in terms of how and why they misrepresent particular groups, Baudrillard (1995) argues representations shouldn’t be considered in terms of whether something is fairly or unfairly represented; this follows because, he argues, how something is represented is its reality. In this respect conventional approaches to understanding […]

Deviancy Amplification and Moral Panics: Part 1

This – and two subsequent posts – looks critically at the concept of moral panic as both a component of deviance amplification and as how they are conceptualised by two different sociological perspectives. This post (Part 1) introduces deviancy amplification and looks at interpretivist concepts of moral panic. Subsequent posts outline neo-Marxist perspectives (Part 2) and […]

Moral Panics: Part 2

While Part 1 introduced deviancy amplification and looked at interpretivist concepts of moral panic, this post outlines an alternative, neo-Marxist, perspective on the latter. As such, it offers a corrective perspective on interpretivist approaches by focusing on the structural / hegemonic aspects of moral panics. Neo-Marxist approaches examine moral panics across two dimensions; firstly, how […]

Psychology: Teacher’s Toolkit

The Teacher’s Toolkit grew out of discussions and contributions on the old TES Psychology forum and while it’s been through a number of revisions this, I think, is probably the latest (2013) version. In basic terms it’s a massive (100-odd page) compendium of teaching ideas and activities aimed at A-level Psychology and loosely arranged around […]

Amoral Panics: Part 3

While the two previous posts looked at moral panics from two different perspectives (“from below” in the case of interpretivist approaches and “from above” in the case of hegemonic neo-Marxist positions) a different way of looking at the concept, developed by Waiton (2008), is to consider contemporary forms of panic in the context of a […]