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In The Impact of Internet on the Mass Media in Europe, pp. 65-76
Editor: Nikos Leandros
Suffolk, UK: Abramis, 2006
Abstract
The article presents a sample research on the radio station websites in the cases of Hungary, Greece, and the singular ARTEradio.com site. The website analysis took into account the textual information, the website layouts, the navigation schemes, the audio contents and the existence or absence of accessible archiving systems. The samples studied include commercial, public, and community radio stations, both with aired and Internet-only programs.
Based on this analysis - which is part of a project still in progress - the paper discusses the multifaceted impact that the Internet has and might have on the radio both as a medium and as a form of mass communication. In order to understand the functions of the radio station websites, the purposes for which they are produced and how they are used, the paper discusses their possible classification scheme. Several methodological questions are discussed in this context. The comparative analysis and the typology derive from and are based on the attempt to understand the extent to which the radio stations use the Internet:
- in an innovative way, i.e. the extent to which they consider it as a new medium and produce new types of content applying new forms, models and patterns of production;
- in terms of a way to reach new target audiences using already known and well tested patterns of content presentation.
The article describes the theoretical background, the methods and the models used for the analysis of the websites. In the case of Hungary, the sample included 36 radio websites, while in the Greek case it included 44 radio websites and it was representative in terms of the radio stations distribution in the 51 prefectures of the country (there are more than 1,000 radio stations in the country). The typology of the radio websites spotlights the main functions of the radio websites which are further clarified through the analysis.
The results from the Greek sample indicate that there is a dominant view about the internet as an additional medium to reach the audiences in known and well established ways rather than a new form of communication that might enrich the content produced and/or distributed by the radio stations.
However, several issues concerning the impact of the radio websites on the listening habits and the musical culture of the audiences in general, remain open for future research.
In Innovation and Challenges in the European Media, pp. XVII-XXXI
Editors: Sophia Kaitatzi-Whitlock, Alexandros Baltzis
Thessaloniki: University Studio Press 2006
Abstract
The Introduction - apart from making explicit the rationale for the structure of the volume - it reviews the broader context of the developments in mass communication and the mass media. It focuses particularly on the differentiation, the reservations and the diversity of attitudes towards European Union and EU institutions, expressed politically through the variety of attitudes toward the Constitutional Treaty by the citizens in different EU countries.
The Introduction underlines that the ambivalence of the European citizens cannot be explained and should not be interpreted in a univocal and simplifying manner, since the data from the various countries show that there is a variety of motives and factors with seemingly similar results. Civilization and culture should also be considered since they are of particular importance for the European identity, which - in its turn - is a condition for the construction of Europe.
Finally, the chapter raises several questions concerning the functions of the mass media considering the change of the "techno-economic" as well as of the cultural paradigm of the European Union and in view of the European integration.
Acta Musicologica, 1/2005 (LXXVII/1), pp. 137-150
International Musicological Society
Basel, Kassel, London, New York, Praha: Bärenreiter
ISSN: 0001-6241
Abstract
The first part of this article outlines the main features of globalization as a complex social phenomenon and the basic approaches to it by social scientists. The second part discusses the changes brought about by the technological developments taking place in a globalized system of reified social relations. This discussion affirms that the institutional changes - concerning mainly music production and distribution - and the structural changes of musical communication transform the reception of the artworks. Considering also the processes of transculturation, these changes form a new context for the creation of music, in an environment of global cultural exchanges. The third part of the article, analyzes the asymmetries and antinomies that result from the globalization of musical culture. The article ascertains that the formal democratization of musical life constitutes an essential feature of the modern musical culture on a global level. This situation favors the coexistence of risks and opportunities on a global and on a local level as well. The article maintains also that the economic, cultural and political aspects of these developments cannot be separated any more. Actually, the globalization of musical culture means globalization of the reified social relations in the cultural field.
This conclusion follows from analyses that appear in the international literature about the economic and cultural consequences of the predominance of global multimedia conglomerates, as well as from analyses of the unequal intellectual property system which these conglomerates impose on a global level. These circumstances construct a new framework for the mass media seen as institutions for the reproduction and distribution of music (and generally of artworks), and - consequently - as systems for the management of aesthetic values. The article arrives also at the conclusion that the developments under discussion create new possibilities for cultural action, interaction, and reaction.
Finally, the study points out some of the new challenges that emerge for the "traditional" musicology, the sociology of music, the theory of artistic education, and also for the cultural and educational policy.
Editors: Sophia Kaitatzi-Whitlock, Alexandros Baltzis
Thessaloniki: University Studio Press 2006
Abstract
This paper explores from a sociological viewpoint the significance of the interactivity and non-linearity for the artistic communication in an environment created by the new media - and mainly by the Internet. By the beginning of the 21st century interactivity and non-linearity might bring about major qualitative changes in the structure and the functions of the artistic communication. Literature, music, films, the visual arts and other forms of art are affected by changes that concern the creation and the production, the dissemination and the distribution, as well as the reception of symbolic-aesthetic forms.
In the creative field non-linearity and interactivity resulted in new types of artworks thus raising several aesthetic issues. At the same time, in a free access network environment these principles affect the dissemination and the reception of the artworks as they may - under certain conditions - have an overwhelming impact on established structures and institutions related to the artistic communication.
Interactivity and non-linearity raise also several issues concerning the educational and cultural policy, since they finally place in the foreground the recipient not as an anonymous unit - part of an impersonal mass - but as a person actively engaged in the aesthetic experience.
Editor: Christos Fragkonikolopoulos
Athens: I. Sideris Publications, 2005
Abstract
This chapter examines the relation of the arts with mass communication in twentieth century and in the developed societies, where the mass media are of major importance for the functions of democracy. The article supports the view that the arts are specific forms of communication (this is what the term "artistic communication" signifies) and therefore their relation with the systems for the production, distribution and reception of symbolic forms in a mass scale is inherent. The analysis is based also on N. Garnham's view, that to understand the functions of the mass media, as well as the ways of cultural consumption in modern societies, and within the modes of production and coercion, a broader definition of the media is necessary, one that will not focus exclusively on the press, television and radio. From this point of view, and given that the symbolic communication is of central importance in late modernity, it would be very limiting to overlook the functions of the arts related with the manufacture of consent as well as with its subversion.
This is the theoretical framework in which the chapter discusses mediation and mass scale as main features of the dominant forms of artistic communication in modern societies. The production, dissemination and reception of artistic goods in mass scale, and through a complex system of institutions - that Howard Becker named "art world" - makes the asymmetries in the freedom of choice and in the access (to cultural resources, channels of communication, and artistic goods), a problem of central importance.
Therefore, the study gives particular emphasis to the antinomies and contradictions of the artistic communication in modern societies that prove the arts not as the "innocent adornments of life", designed for light entertainment, but as fields of symbolic antagonism and conflict with particularly important social, economic and political ramifications.
The analysis concludes that the asymmetries in the access and the freedom of choice - for the artists and for the public alike - are related not only (and not mainly) with the intermediary institutions, but with the cultural and educational policy as well. In this respect, the article argues that emancipation and democracy in the field of the artistic communication cannot be achieved just by advancing the access of larger parts of the population to larger quantities of artistic goods. It might be achieved by advancing and encouraging systematically autonomous forms of artistic communication and the active participation of the audiences first in their status as citizens, and then as consumers; not vice versa.
