Bourdieu (Pierre), On Television

Résumé du document

Television has become increasingly important in today's society and it has become a tool for expressing an opinion or conveying a message to the public. It is also able to influence other fields in the social space through which it enables a series of interactions. It also determines the consequences of economic constraints in a society. We will try to examine some of these internal constraints (and their consequences) that rule the television industry, along with some examples which can explain the situation.

Extraits

[...] Bourdieu conceives of society as a social space, a space of conflict between those who dominate and those who are dominated. In this regard, he perpetuates the bipolar vision of Karl Marx in a certain way. But where Marx saw society as a whole conditioned by the relations of production - the "class struggle" - Bourdieu sees society as a “collection of sets compartmentalised and divided. This collection of sets is the result of a complex historical phenomenon called differentiation, which is used as a principle of distribution of power. These various sets are called fields. [...]

[...] The battle between those who dominate and those who are dominated to acquire various kinds of capital takes place in These various fields It should be noted here that Bourdieu uses the economic term capital as an analogy: for example, a scientist, within the scientific field, will have to invest his time and knowledge, to maximise his capital, which may be peer recognition, and thus conquer a higher position within his field. These various fields are, according to Bourdieu, relatively autonomous, and obey specific logics. The different categories of capital do not have the same importance in every field. In Bourdieu's opinion, the artistic field does not obey to the same monetarist logic as the economic field. [...]

[...] Bourdieu (Pierre), On Television 1. Introduction The publication of Pierre Bourdieu's book Sur la Télévision in France in 1996 gave birth to a huge media controversy within the television industry itself, but also among journalists and intellectuals, especially French "media-intellectuals" such as Jacques Attali, Luc Ferry and the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut. The aim of Bourdieu's book is to point out several implicit structural problems that have an important influence on journalism in general, but also on other culturally produced areas such as law, knowledge or art. [...]

[...] The news as a show Thus, news on television tends to become a kind of show, in order to acquire the largest audience. From this angle, we can understand the attention of the media on spectacles, disasters, and human interest stories rather than more substantive examinations of political and social issues. Bourdieu calls these pieces of news "omnibus information" : it is inoffensive, "does not offend anyone", never brings up problems - or if it does, only problems "that do not pose any problem." For this aspect of "news as a show", Bourdieu focuses on the media's attention to the "game" of politics as it is played by politicians and lobbyists, as opposed to an exploration of the concrete, material effects of these games. [...]

[...] And this choice is a subjective choice, since who chooses are the minority of people that elaborate television programs. This process of selection can have a great influence in the "construction of public opinion". Since television is able to reach millions of people, 50-seconds appearance on television can have more impact than 50'000 demonstrators Thus, this social construction may mobilise or demobilise people by, for instance, making them think that people are concerned about one problem like nuclear power, rather than another like growing poverty. [...]