Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

GRADED ASSIGNMENT # 1 (due September 27): News Article Analysis

For this first assignment, I’d like to direct you to Carey’s case study, that of “the role of the newspaper in social life” (see pp. 10 – 11, as scanned in the Ereserves pdf. format). Like a million other things, newspaper stories are “communicative acts.” As such, quite predictably, Carey makes a case that the role of news stories is more than just to inform readers of certain happenings. Indeed, news stories are a significant source of values, beliefs, norms that are dished out to the reader sometimes explicitly and often indirectly. Besides speaking about what X did to Y, news stories also speak to us about certain notions of good and bad (values), about certain laws that structure our society, etc. The “ritualic” products of news stories: confirmation of “the way things are,” and identification (on the part of the reader) with featured “heroes” fulfilling specific “social roles”: “A ritual view of communication will focus on a different range of problems in examining a newspaper. It will, for example, view reading a newspaper less as a sending or gaining information and more like attending a mass: a situation in which nothing new is learned but in which a particular view of the world is portrayed and confirmed. News reading, and writing, is a ritual act and moreover a dramatic one. What is arrayed before the reader is not pure information but a portrayal of the contending forces in the world” (please re-read the rest of this crucial paragraph, on p.10).

The Transmission Model

Consider the example of an article from China’s “People’s Daily Online” (“Nearly 2,000 Chinese Officials Confess Wrongdoings”). What can this article tell us about “Chinese culture”? Ignore everything you already know about “Chinese culture” for a moment and focus on this one article. Under the transmission model of communication, its purpose is pretty straight-forward: “Nearly 2,000 officials have confessed their wrongdoings since China's disciplinary watchdog urged officials to own up to their misconduct on May 30.” From this (limited) perspective, this article achieved “successful communication”: one can assume that most everybody who read it understood the information presented in it (“2,000 officials have confessed”). Information was encoded by the sender (i.e., the writer of the article), it was sent through a medium (i.e., the newspaper), and it probably arrived at the receiver (i.e., the reader) pretty much unadulterated (i.e., the reader understood what the writer intended to convey). Mission accomplished.

The Ritual Model

But let’s complicate matters a bit, and look at this article not as a vehicle of explicit information, but rather as a “cultural document” – a text that can be “forced” to tell us something about the culture in which it makes sense, in which the various unspoken values, beliefs, norms, assumptions, expectations, etc. that underlie it come across as normal. For this article to be a “normal article” in “Chinese culture,” it must be replicating some of the most fundamental, taken-for-granted elements of “Chinese culture” itself. What might these be? Let’s try to read this article as if we have no knowledge whatsoever about “Chinese” society.

First, let’s talk institutions: apparently, we are dealing with a government that has at least some measure of authority, since it is able to threaten people with being “severely punished.” And here’s something that’s more interesting: who exactly is playing this government role? Apparently, this “Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of China” can speak for the entire government. It might even be the government, even though it’s “just” a party agency. Think about how this would sound in America: “the Republican National Committee has just announced severe penalties for Americans who steal money.” What? Since when does the RNC have the power to lay down the law? That’s for the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches of government to do. No American party gets to have that power, even though members of a party can indeed hold public office where they can make such decisions – but the Republican Party itself does not have the powers that the government does. However, in a one-party establishment, it makes sense to say “the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of China announced that corrupted officials will be severely punished.” The writer of the article didn’t have to explain why this agency of the Communist Party had that power; he or she simply assumed that the readers already knew why. From that we can conclude that China’s one-party political organization is not brand new (if it were, the writer would have explained some of its more relevant dimensions). And here’s another piece of info about the authority of the Communist Party: not only does it have the power to enforce the law, but it also has the power to “forgive” people when they break the law. It is precisely such taken-for-granted elements that we are looking for, because they tell us a lot about what passes for “normal” in a particular culture.

Let’s also note that China is a country that has laws. It also has corruption, which is apparently quite a problem (since the government has a “disciplinary watchdog” set up to deal with this “official corruption” (apparently “corruption” has subcategories, too). It also has an economy system based on “money” – that ultimate fiction (“fiction” - because those pieces of paper have “value” only as long as we agree to pretend that they have “value”…).

Next, values: trust and forgiveness are both either explicitly or implicitly dealt with in this article. They’re not explained, though, which leads us to conclude that the writer expected his/her readers to understand what they are all about and to appreciate their importance. Norms: Thou shalt not be “corrupt” – a notion that isn’t even explained, beyond the phrase “officials who have traded power for money.” Supposedly, the readers know what “[official] corruption” means and don’t need a glossary.

And I could go on and on in this vein and “interrogate” this short article forever. Now imagine that, to this analysis, I added other analyses, of other “cultural texts” (e.g., newspaper articles, works of fiction, my observations at an intersection in Beijing, a conversation with a shopkeeper, etc.) – I am now beginning to study “Chinese culture” in a methodical, productive way.

The Assignment

And now, the actual assignment: do what I have done above with a newspaper article from your host country. “Milk” it for all the “cultural clues” that it might hold. Make it speak, “interrogate” it: what are its assumptions, what are the values and norms that make it seem “normal” in the culture in which it is meaning-full? You are encouraged to connect these analyses with your own observations in that culture – just make sure that the analysis takes precedence over the narrative (i.e., make sure that the anecdotes don’t dominate your text to the detriment of analytic and critical work!). Maybe you can connect the “cultural clues” you have derived from the article to personal observations: What did the “locals” see fit to explain to you, and what did they assume that you would already know? What prompted these judgments of theirs?

Make sure you include your name and a link to the article you are analyzing. As always, giving feedback and striking up conversations is highly encouraged and appreciated! Write at least two solid paragraphs.

/Go to Students' Texts